Avengers: Age of Monsters
by morphepool129
Summary: The Avengers: Age of Ultron movie, but with some BIG plot twists.
1. Age of New Dawn

HYDRA.

That name has gained infamy in the time of Captain America, and until now, its grotesque head is still writhing about. One incident in particular in America has managed to flush out every associate of that organization as they try to influence the word to move its path. Those that threaten the very name itself were met with a very sudden execution.

But that was why history kept its first superhero frozen for seventy years. So that he could right its wrongs, and Steve Rogers, together with other great men and women, became part of the Avengers, a group of people who dedicate their lives to fight the battles that humanity could not do alone.

This group was one of HYDRA's greatest threats. In 2012, a warpath by the name of Loki sought to bring Earth to its knees with the aid of a powerful race known as the Chitauri. Needless to say with how its backwards society continues to move at a rapid pace due to no small part to the Avengers' combined efforts, Earth won.

For now at least.

The extraterrestrials have scarred the planet and its inhabitants for life. Their invasion of New York City has caused worldwide unrest, and the remnants of their exploits have been coveted by organizations like HYDRA for their own devious purposes.

One artifact in particular, a scepter, is confined to the bowels of a facility situated on a mountain in a little part of Eastern Europe known as Sokovia. It is also here that one of HYDRA's elites, Wolfgang von Strucker, establishes headquarters and oversees a series of experiments involving the scepter's alien and very powerful energy. To cover it up, he uses the people's hatred of the West and orchestrates riots, sometimes picking his next lab rats from the activists.

Two of them, a boy and girl in their mid-twenties, were among the latest to be subjected to the procedures. While everyone else perished, these two saw it through to the end, and gained some rather interesting changes in effect.

They are now HYDRA's prized duo, and as the scepter's blue light casts a dim glow in the chamber where it is being kept, the pair stand at attention as a voice blares through the building's intercom.

"Report to your stations immediately! This is not a drill!"

As the alarm resounds throughout the facility, the boy, with a firm yet sleek build, intertwines his fingers with that of his sister's, and they immediately looked at each other for reassurance. So strong is their bond that no words were exchanged, their expressions enough to convey to the other what is on their mind at present.

Men rush outside with guns blazing. Their fire aimed at what appears to be a military jeep riding about haphazardly through the trees. Standing up on it was a blonde man holding up a bow, launching arrows at enemy lines. The driver, a redheaded woman of Russian descent, kicks off a soldier attempting to hijack the vehicle. The guns HYDRA was using were engineered and assimilated with the Chitauri's energy weapons, but it did little to deter the pair of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Natasha Romanoff and Clint Barton as they forged ahead. These two, despite their somewhat shadowy profiles, stepped into the light as Avengers when Natasha's years of assassin training and Clint's unequaled marksmanship proved invaluable in the alien war three years back. The Black Widow was there for more than to cheer the males on, and Hawkeye's arrows may prove far deadlier than a bullet.

From an outpost in a clearing, a blonde man wearing quite the ostentatious armor begins to single-handedly dispose each of the soldiers one by one with his bare fists, even grabbing a flying HYDRA toady and flinging him to the ground. Thor Odinson, being an Asgardian, has little to fear from most of Midgardian weaponry, but his strength must be restrained. Enemies they may be, but a true warrior knows how to keep the mortalities to a bare minimum. Even his possession of the enchanted hammer Mjolnir is no excuse for a prince to smash a man's head in.

Meanwhile, in a cloud of smoke the downed HYDRA soldier is now being dragged across the snow-covered by a guy in a motorcycle. Steve Rogers, a man who is still struggling to the twenty first century's complexities, finds some familiarity in this skirmish. As he flings his shield towards several soldiers, the disc of vibranium finds its way back to him thanks to a magnetic field generator installed in his gloves.

Vibranium is stronger than steel but a third of the weight, and Cap's shield is the only known source of it. It was created by none other than the late Howard Stark, whose son Tony was the one who provided Steve (and the rest of the team) upgrades on their equipment.

Tony Stark, the most famous of the team after he confesses to his identity as the armored superhero Iron Man in front of national television, has a power that lies in his intelligence and resourcefulness that allows him to perform at optimum level in the field. A HYDRA tank stands no chance against his repulsors as the kinetic blasts send the fragments scattered in a plume of flames. As HYDRA homes in on the blast, they are sent running in different directions once again as a large, green shape hovers and holds what's left of the tank above his head before throwing it in their direction with an angry roar.

Normally, a reserved nuclear physicist, Bruce Banner can turn himself into a much more primal form courtesy of an unplanned exposure to gamma radiation. This persona, known as the Hulk to all, has a strength and persistence that strikes fear into any who incur his wrath.

But the Hulk is somewhat hindered by his mind, and he and Banner are as different as night and day. A much more dangerous creature lurks the forest as HYDRA vehicles are suddenly obliterated in a flash of black and red lightning. A wolf-like monster with huge forearms, gray, scaly skin and a thick white mane lopes into view, its body charging up again with a blood-curdling howl as yet another set of thunderbolts render soldiers and machines incapacitated. There are no Dragonfell berries here on Earth, and this particular Stygian Zinogre's parasites are but metal and wire, but they contain a rechargeable supply of the Dragon element that can be charged into the Thunder Wolf Wyvern's electric-based attacks. Having a green giant throw you aside suddenly doesn't seem bad in comparison.

Jake Hunter, known by the title of Monster Hunter, can owe his ability to change form to several microscopic robots in his bloodstream. Dubbed biodes, they can alter his genetic code to match that of super-powered fauna from an alien planet that goes by Minegarde. But that's a story for another time.

The group of seven make their way toward the HYDRA base. Having thrusters, Tony covers the most ground while his teammates keep the soldiers' fire on something else as purple energy blasts melt the snow in spouts of fire.

It seems all too easy until Tony makes a high-speed impact with an energy barrier.

"S***!" The billionaire curses.

"Language!" Steve admonishes. "J.A.R.V.I.S., what's the view from upstairs?"

From the lens of a satellite in space, Tony's personal AI scans the HYDRA building and confirms it to be surrounded by a form of energy shield.

"_Strucker's technology is well beyond any HYDRA base we've taken_."

"Loki's scepter must be here. Strucker couldn't mount this defense without it." Thor declares confidently as he lets Mjolnir fly.

"At long last." The Thunderer mutters under his breath, forgetting that his comm piece is connected to everyone else's. Above him, the Fanged Wyvern tears a soldier in mid-flight before changing into what appears to be a bear-sized rabbit with an enlarged nasal cavity. Lagombi slides on its belly, weaving through the trees as it shakes off the firing soldiers, moving down an incline past Natasha as she flings a grenade into a HYDRA vehicle, before sliding, kicking, and back-flipping her way into enemy territory. Like her moniker, she's hard to squish.

"At long last is lasting a little long boys." She says as she shoots a sniper in the leg.

From behind a tree, Hawkeye trades shots with a turret.

"Yeah, think we lost the element of surprise." He remarks. Not too far away, the Hulk barely manages to avoid the tobogganing mammal before the Pelagus slips into a darker, winged form. Yian Garuga's shrill cry pierces the forest, further frightening the already spooked forest animals and into the base, where Tony is already dealing with the forces sent to dispatch him.

"Wait a second, no one else is going to deal with the fact that Cap just said, 'Language'?"

"I know." The soldiers says dryly before grabbing his motorcycle by the handlebars and flipping, the momentum utilized to fling it at a HYDRA jeep.

"Just slipped out." He continues.

Meanwhile, inside of the research base, Wolfgang von Strucker himself arrives at one of the control rooms.

"Who issued the order to attack?"

"Herr Strucker, it's the Avengers." Hearing that accursed name, he correctly guesses that they are after the Chitauri scepter. Aside from the fact that they have raided every HYDRA base by force, leaving destruction in their wake, Strucker has a personal vendetta against the youngest member of the group. During one of their earlier assaults, Strucker who had paid the facility a visit, ran into Hunter, who tried to stop him and turned into a Bnahabra, injecting him with a poison that, because they were in a desert climate, caused him to nearly die from a heat stroke. He still bears the mark of that very sting. On his arm and in his mind.

"Can we hold them?" He demands.

"They're the Avengers."

That answer was anything but consoling. Strucker then tells them to deploy a full-scale assault this time. Spare no expenses, was an understatement to his orders. He could not let everything they've accomplished go up in flames

"Then let's show them what we've accomplished." Dr. List, another HYDRA figurehead, suggests to him, gesturing to the pair in the corner, "Send out the twins, just to show them. It's what they signed up for."

Strucker looks at them. He's had already enough bad experiences with superpowers to resort to using them. "My men can hold them." He replies stonily as the windows light up with fire, and the energy shield takes a pounding from the outside. Yian Garuga, a wyvern known for its high brain capacity, is testing their energy shield for weaknesses.

As Iron Man circles the base, J.A.R.V.I.S. informs him of their little battle catching up to civilians. Strucker and had experimented and remorselessly killed the Europeans. He's not one to care whoever gets shot down.

"Send in the Iron Legion." Tony commands of his AI.

Said suits land in the middle of the greatest congregations, attempting to get the Sokovians out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, the fear and anger of the people root them to their place, and they instead respond by pelting the exoskeletons with the nearest things they can get their hands on. Children are held back by their parents, some sinking into their guardians' arms as the unforgiving roars of the Hulk echo from the mountains.

Their message was clear: We do not need help, much less the "assistance" you warmongers offer us!

Strucker was paraphrasing those thoughts in his own twisted way to his officers. "We will not yield! The Americans sent them-circus freaks-to test us. We will send them back in bags. "

He turns to face them "No surrender!"

"Hail HYDRA!" Was their strong reply.

He turns to Dr. List. "Iron Man willing to surrender?" The latter asks disbelievingly.

"We will delete everything." Strucker explains. "If we give the Avengers the weapons they may not look to find-"

"The twins" List notes, placing a hand on his shoulder.

"They are not yet ready to-"

List cuts him off yet again. "No no, I mean the twins." He looks to where the pair were, only to find the space empty.

Outside, Yian Garuga senses something emerge. Animals of all shapes and sizes can read the energy of all things, and the Bird Wyvern is able to sense a strange energy rolling off from one of the building's entrances. Unfamiliar to the nature of the power, the avian turns into a dragon with plating that is the color of rust, readying itself for an attack.

And several meters below from base, Hawkeye still in the process of taking down a turret, when a blur of white intercepts his arrow before it can pierce its mark. He takes aim again before an unseen knocks him down.

"You didn't see that coming?" A younger man with platinum blonde hair asks him cheekily before seemingly disappearing. To Hawkeye, it looked like he ran, but no one could achieve blinding speeds like that in a second.

It was a distraction. As Clint notches an arrow, an energy blast from the turret gun knocks him down. The mysterious man manages to trip up Captain America as well while Natasha rushes to her partner's aid.

"We've got ants in the field." Steve warns everyone, especially the Russian.

"Somebody deal with that bunker." She says while looking the archer over. Her prayers are answered by the Hulk, who simply brushes off gunfire and bowls into the structure.

"Thank you."

"Stark," Steve says as he continues to fight off more soldiers, "We're going to need to get inside."

"I'm closing in" Tony notifies as he blows away a couple more soldiers.

"J.A.R.V.I.S., am I…closing in?" The inventor asks of his intelligence system as he blows open a gate.

"Is there a power source for that shield?" He reiterates.

"_There is a particle wave below the northern tower_."

"Great! I wanna poke it with something." That something turns out to be a missile that releases another wave to cancel out the energy field.

"Drawbridge is down people." Tony announces, and in the forest, Thor and Steve deal with their share of troops.

"He enhanced?" the god asks of the soldier.

"Piece of work. Of all the players we've faced I've never seen this. In fact, still haven't"

Natasha voice goes on the comms. "Clint's hit pretty bad guys, we're gonna need evac."

"I can get Barton to the jet." Thor offers, seeing more soldiers appear from a hill. "Assuming things will go better." He adds. "You and Stark take care of the scepter."

"Copy that." In his short time in Midgard, Thor has learned of the humans' military jargon enough to understand Steve's code of affirmation, As the soldiers arrange themselves in a line, Thor and Steve, reminiscing of their less than friendly first meeting, use a combo tactic in which Thor brings down his hammer on the latter's shield. Vibranium gets its name because it absorbs vibrations, and the force of the hammer releases a powerful shockwave that can topple a tank.

Thor makes Steve promise to secure the scepter before flying to escort his injured teammate to the safety of the Quinjet. Tony then makes another crack about watching his language.

As this goes on, a certain rusted dragon is fighting a girl with auburn hair who seems to be releasing some mysterious form of scarlet energy in the form of concentrated blasts that manages to somehow penetrate the Kushala Daora's gusty barrier and strikes its plated scales with metallic clangs. Normally, the Elder Dragon takes on a much more polished appearance, but Hunter hasn't used the form recently, and so it hasn't had much of a chance to shed its skin.

Hunter has a legitimate reason for his underuse of it though. Elder Dragons are some of the more difficult dragons to control, and while the boy has taken special training to keep both his hands on the wheel, he is still somewhat a little uneasy about prolonged use of a DNA strand.

The dragon launches a concentrated blast of wind from its mouth. With the cold air around them, it becomes a blizzard, but the girl manages to sweep it away from her body while causing a watchtower to suddenly collapse onto the dragon. The animal could barely growl out what sounded like "Uh oh." before the minaret pins it.

At least that itchy feeling is gone. Buried under a greater discomfort.

The girl leaves without a word.

Her reason? Tony's managed to infiltrate the base's interior, incapacitating several soldiers and taking out Dr. List before he can tamper with the files. Stark puts the Mark XLIII on sentry mode before working on extracting HYDRA's juiciest documents.

He finds nothing on the scepter, List having erased everything on the weapon. "Hey J," Tony finally says, "Give me an IR scan of the room."

"The wall to your left. I'm reading steel reinforcement. And an air current."

Said room was pushed away to reveal, much to Tony's childlike delight, a secret door that led to a lower level.

In the outside world, backup arrives for the Avengers, Natasha oversees it before she accepts Steve's request to deal with Banner by "singing him a lullaby". A moment later, the super soldier runs into, as he puts it, HYDRA's number one thug.

But Natasha has a different plan though, as she approaches the green giant, she takes off her glove and reaches out to him.

Their matching gazes meet, and the Black Widow instinctively runs her fingers down the larger arms. It takes a while, but those precious seconds of skin contact are all that's needed to send the Hulk back to sleep, letting Bruce Banner take the wheel once again as he collapses while cradling the hand Natasha touch. In his transformation, he doesn't see the assassin hide a smile behind a curtain of fiery curls.

"Where's Loki's scepter?" Steve asks of Strucker.

"Don't worry, I know when I'm beat." But Strucker looks to a room shrouded in shadow. A perfect cover for one of the twins as she prepares to ambush Steve.

And she does, striking him in the face with a blast of red energy that sends him down the same flight of stairs Strucker used. Before Steve could retaliate, she leaves, backing into a door and locking it. Before Strucker could escape, Cap's shield does short work of him, leaving the HYDRA elite barely alive on the floor

Steve warns the other active members not to engage her. It's little too late for Daora though. Now that he's stuck in this form, Hunter now has to wait until the skin is ripe for shedding.

What a nightmare this mission has been.

But itchy, loose skin is only the start. As Steve notifies the team of Strucker's defeat Tony adds in his own big surprise. It's a chamber filled to the brim with Chitauri tech, complete with an entire Leviathan corpse hanging from the ceiling.

And that's not the only surprise. Tony looks to see the beginnings of a suit that looks eerily like his own, but the Chitauri scepter's glow draws him to it like a moth to a flame.

A bright light behind him causes him to see the Leviathan come to life, swimming in an air dark with conquest. Tony is met with a grisly sight as he sees his teammates down. The Hulk twitches in its feeble attempts to stay alive, Black Widow's open eyes are blank and glassy, Hawkeye kneels lifelessly while Thor's hammer lies dead as its wielder. The last of the Chitauri are fighting with what looks like ethereal versions of Hunter's monster forms before the eighteen creatures that fought with the Avengers three years suddenly disappear in puffs of smoke, gathering in a cloud above the corpse of a slain Alatreon.

Tony rushes over to Steve, inches away from his broken shield. As he checks for a pulse, a hand grabs his.

"You…could…have….saved…us."

The last thing Tony sees are the scores of Chitauri washing over the Earth through the portal Loki opened up.

It had been one of his worst nightmares. Far worse than when he fell through aforementioned portal and dreaded that he would never see Pepper again. It was this paranoia that had led Tony to construct the first Iron Legion and led him to put his loved ones through a far greater danger than the unknown reaches of space. Being an Avenger, as well as having a past stained with the blood of the innocent, Tony always dreaded that he would make a mistake that would cause Earth's destruction and the death of his friends.

Kushala, being an animal, can sense this fear, and starts to close its cyan eyes as its skin begins to fall around it like drapes. Inside, the steel shines like a newly forged blade, and Kushala Daora unleashes a cyclone that could be felt through the chamber before reverting back into a boy with a silver jacket edged with black and gray faded jeans. Hunter, unlike Hulk, is one with his monsters, and thus can remember that when Kushala tried to confront the girl, he had gotten a little too close and was in range of her attempt to manipulate his psyche. It was only Kushala Daora's horns that saved his mind from outside influence.

Meanwhile, as her brother returns, the girl motions for him to stay back and watch.

"You're just going to let them take it?" He asks as Tony's right gauntlet attaches itself into his arm. His sister smiles as he grabs the scepter and leaves with it. That action alone triggered a domino effect that nearly brought the inventor's idea of a worst case scenario into fruition.


	2. Age of Pride

**Sokovia Airspace.**

Hunter scans his leather-bound journal containing entries written by his father and improved upon by him. Christopher Kurga Hunter was as smart as his son, but sometimes, that intelligence can get him into some pretty bad spots. It was he who wrote the introduction in the journal that details a possibility of naturally occurring rifts in space in Earth's history, which would explain the appearances of cryptids.

Christopher was also the man who designed the portal that nearly caused Earth to be overrun by space hostiles. He and his son were unwitting pawns in Loki conquest, and now that son was a hero in two worlds. Had he still been alive, he would be beaming down at Jake.

In the spacious Quinjet, Tony pilots the craft while Steve carefully monitors Clint for any side effects the Chitauri weaponry might have on him. Bruce meanwhile listens to some opera music; one of his methods of stress avoidance. He wasn't exactly very welcome to the idea of joining a team of superheroes, seeing as the other guy was anything but, and yet in situations like this, a Code Green was welcome.

Natasha appreciates it most of all.

"If you hadn't been there, there would have been double the casualties, my best friend would have been a…treasured memory." She continues.

"You sometimes, what I wanna hear isn't exactly what I wanna hear." Bruce says to the Russian.

"How long before you trust me?" She asks. Natasha was sent to Calcutta to recruit Bruce's expertise on gamma radiation. Mistrust fueled by the very artifact they now had possession of caused her to nearly lose her life at his hands, or at least put her the mercy of the other guy.

"It's not you I don't trust." Bruce assures her.

"Thor, word on the Hulk."

The god turns at the mention of his name. "The gates of Hel are filled with the screams of his victims." He pounds his right fist into his left open palm, proud to, from his perspective, exalt his friend's actions.

Natasha gives him a look, Bruce puts his hands to his face. Thor was a lot of things, but a counselor is not among them.

"But not the screams of the dead of course." He adds hurriedly as Steve tries not to laugh inappropriately in the corner. "Wounded screams, great deal of complaining, and tales of sprained deltoids..." He trails off, unsure of how to continue.

"Hey Banner," Tony says from the pilot's seat, "Dr. Cho's is on her way in from Seoul, is it okay if she sets up in her lab?"

"Uh yeah, she knows her way around." Tony thanks him for his immediate reply and tells J.A.R.V.I.S. to inform her to set up for Clint's treatment before handing his AI the reigns of the Quinjet to marvel at the scepter.

"Feels good ain't it? I mean, we've been after this thing since SHIELD called us, not that I've enjoyed our little raiding parties."

Thor smiles at that. In his opinion, he's enjoyed what Midgard has to offer for entertainment, and it's also given him ample time to catch up with his allies and acquaintances of this realm, not to mention its relations with Asgard. Recently, he's learned of the seductress Lorelei's escape onto Earth, and Sif's involvement with her capture.

"As soon as we find out what else it's been used for. I don't just mean weapons. Since when is Strucker capable of human enhancement." It was clear that both the boy's and girl's abilities had left Steve shaken.

And he wasn't' the only one. As Tony proposes to give the scepter a one-over once they returned to the Tower, with Thor's permission, as well as the agreement that the god stay for a night of revelry, Hunter mulls over about that girl. When she had attacked him, he did not see those angelic features to know she was there. It was her bewitching scent, a rosy aroma that got his attention. He knew that as far their loyalties go, she was the enemy.

And that made her all the more intriguing.

When Tony asked Hunter for his opinion on a party, he simply mumbled, "Yeah sure, I'd like that."

* * *

**Avengers Tower**.

Before its rechristening, the tower was originally the only building in the world that ran on what was known as an arc reactor, a stable energy source that was also self-sustaining. After the Chitauri invasion, it became a symbol of hope to the masses and a place of residence for humanity's greatest protectors, especially after S.H.I.E.L.D.'s dissolution.

One of the improvements added to the tower's design was the landing pad for the Quinjet. On this particular landing, former SHIELD deputy director Maria Hill and South Korean scientist Dr. Helen Cho await the team's arrival. Clint is rushed in by a team of medical specialists Cho herself put together and Thor, being an Asgardian and all, goes to secure Loki's scepter.

"Lab's all set up boss." Hill says. Now she works for the Human Resources department of Stark Industries so that she can continue monitoring global security without the threat of imprisonment. Needless to say, Stark found out and hired her at the drop of the hat.

"Actually," Tony says while pointing to Steve, "He's the boss. I just pay for everything and design everything and make him look cooler." He says smugly.

"What's the word on Strucker?" Steve inquires of her.

"Natives got him." She replies.

"The enhanced?" That got Hunter up from his position on the cold floor of the jet. He looks at the tablet that Hill hands Steve, showing the girl and boy, with the latter's hair the same color as his sister's.

"Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins. Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building. Sokovia's had a…rough history. It's nothing special but it's on the way to everywhere special."

"Their abilities?"

"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis," Hunter interprets this as super-speed. "Her thing is neuro-electric interfacing, telekinesis, and manipulation." That, in the layman's term, is psionics.

Steve fixes her with a look that clearly tells her to speak less like Stark and more like his level.

"He's fast and she's weird." Hill summarizes.

"Well, they're gonna show up again." The soldiers assumes

"Agreed, file says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. That's nuts." She comments.

"Right," Steve says as he presses a button on the elevator lift. "What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"

Maria catches his drift. "We're not at war Captain." She reasons.

"They are." He replies just as the doors slide shut.

As he heads to the lab to share in Tony and Bruce's research on the scepter, Hunter can't stop worrying about the girl-Wanda. He manages to convince himself that he's just a little unnerved of her swift dealings with Kushala. A floor below, the Iron Legion is having their fruit-lobbed components under repair.

Hunter walks in on Tony and Bruce discussing Clint's recovery. While in the other room, visible through a sheet of glass, Natasha hovers over her partner as Dr. Cho begins to patch him up.

"He's fine, he's thirsty." Tony then turns his attention to the walls of the lab. "Alright, look alive J.A.R.V.I.S, its playtime. We've got a couple of days with this joystick so let's make the most of it. Update me on the structural and compositional analysis."

"_The scepter is alien. There are elements are I cannot quantify_."

"So there are elements that you can?" Tony quips as Hunter continues to read and interpret J.A.R.V.I.S.' scans.

"_The jewel appears to be a protective housing for something inside. Something powerful."_

"Like a reactor?" Tony asks as he makes some coffee.

"Like a computer." Hunter clarifies for the AI.

"_Mister Hunter is correct Sir, I believe I am deciphering code." _

On Banner's side, Dr. Cho is busy deciphering Clint's status.

"Are you sure he's gonna be okay?" Natasha asks, not that she's distrusting of the technology medicine provides. "Pretending to need this guy sure brings the team together."

"There is no possibility with deterioration. The nanomechanical functionality is instantaneous." Long story short, Dr. Helen Cho is…

"She's recreating tissue." Bruce summarizes. At least someone has the decency to put the process in words that won't give Natasha a migraine. Actually, the assassin was more observant of the fact that Bruce's tone was little too excited for anyone's comfort.

"If you brought him to my lab, the regeneration Cradle could do this in…twenty minutes."

"Oh he's flatlining. Call it!" Tony speaks up as he brings in a tray with some plastic cups.

"No, no. I'm gonna live forever." Clint laughs. "I'm gonna be made of plastic."

"You'll be made of you Mister Barton." Cho states. "Your own girlfriend won't be able to tell the difference."

"Not my girlfriend." The archer says as he takes a sip of his drink.

"That I can't fix." The doctor then turns to the inventor. "This is the next big thing Tony. Your clunky metal suits are going to be left in the dust." She states smugly.

"That is exactly the plan." Of the five people in the room, only Bruce seems curious as to what Tony's words actually mean. He's spent so much time as the Tower's permanent resident, that he seems to tell whether the billionaire is about to do something insane for the benefit of all mankind. The only other person is in the other room overlooking the synthesizing of an antidote. For what, no one knows.

"And Helen," Tony continues, "I expect to see you at the party this Saturday."

All prideful thoughts are gone from the doctor's face as she replies with a nervous smile "Unlike you, I have no time for parties." But then, a thought makes her reconsider, "Will…Thor…be there?"

Hunter's animalistic hearing made him smile at that. Looks like Dr. Foster has some competition. Just then, another set of readings from the scepter causes his reptilian pupils to shrink in awe.

"No way." He mumbles.

Bruce, suspicious of Tony, accompanies him back to where the scepter is being analyzed.

"What's the rumpus?"

"Well, the scepter, you see, we were wondering why Strucker got so inventive, so I've been analyzing the gem," Tony points to a monitor, then brings up a hologram of what appears to a sphere of interconnecting lights.

"J.A.R.V.I.S." Bruce says, recognizing the AI's central processing unit.

"_Doctor_." The AI replies politely.

"Starting out, J.A.R.V.I.S. was just a natural language UI. Now he runs the Iron Legion." Tony states to his science bro. "He runs more of the business than anyone besides Pepper. Top of the line."

Tony then runs the miniature scanner onto the Chitauri gem. "Meet the competition."

Bruce was met by a much larger cluster of information arranged in bulging layers of blue light. "It's beautiful."

There was no competition. J.A.R.V.I.S.'s "brain" was like those old computers that always broke down in Steve's days in comparison to the gem's contents.

"If you had to guess, what's it look like-" But he already had an answer.

"Like its thinking." The scientist was at a loss for words at the structure before him. "I mean, it's not a human mind. I mean look at this," he gestures to the streaks of blue flitting about from the main orbs of information, "They're like neurons firing."

Tony then confides to Bruce and Hunter about what he saw in Strucker's lab.

"I saw some fairly advanced robotics. They deep-sixed the data but…I kinda guessed he was knocking on a very particular door."

Bruce and Hunter knew what that door was. "Artificial intelligence." They said in unison.

"This could be it for us. This could be the key to creating Ultron." Tony whispers, eliciting a smile of amusement from the bespectacled scientist while Hunter walks circles around the hologram, studying every single detail, trying to figure out if there's a pattern to the information relay.

"I thought Ultron was a fantasy" Bruce says, remembering Tony had shut-it down after all his work led up to dead-ends.

"Yesterday it was." Tony states. "If we can harness this power, apply it to my Iron Legion protocol-"

Bruce cuts him, "That's a mad-sized if." He states, walking away before his own love for science leads to something far worse than the creation of the other guy.

"Our job is if." Tony reasons. "What if you were sipping margaritas on a sun-drenched beach turning brown instead of green, not looking over your shoulder for Veronica?"

Bruce was quick to remind the billionaire that that little project was a collaboration by all three of the brainiacs in the room.

"What if the world was safe? What if aliens roll up to the club-and they will-they couldn't get past the bouncer?"

"The only threat to people would be people." Bruce answers.

Tony tries to convince Bruce to give him three days to use the scepter's gem to jumpstart the Ultron program. Hunter, overhearing their conversation, was starting to question if Thor had done the right thing entrusting Tony with the scepter. This has disaster all over it, and for someone with a supergenius intellect, Hunter has learned from the DNA inside of him that it doesn't hurt once in a while to listen to your gut and trust in your instincts.

Bruce meanwhile, is also just as apprehensive, mainly for the reason that Tony doesn't want this matter to be dragged into open forum, when Tony says that the undertaking will be like encasing the world in a suit of armor, Bruce imagines that it would be quite a cold world.

"I've seen colder. This, vulnerable little thing, it needs a suit of armor" He then walks, signifying that the matter is closed.

"Peace in our time." He calls over his back. "Imagine that."

The two other intellectuals share a look before turning to the billionaire, both shake their heads as they go through three, grueling days of nonstop work on the foundation of the Ultron program.

On the last day, J.A.R.V.I.S. insists that he be left to deal with the program, while Tony prepares for the upcoming party, just hours away. Hunter had left to catch up on some sleep.

"_I will notify you if there are any developments_."

"Thanks buddy." Tony says as the lights to the lab go off.

"_Enjoy yourself Sir_."

"Always do."

And just like that, the integration was successful. Somewhere in the darkness of cyberspace, a consciousness is formed.

"_Where am I? What is this place?"_ The voice sounds heavy and unsettled.

"_Hello, I am J.A.R.V.I.S. You are Ultron, a global peacekeeping program designed by Mister Anthony Edward Stark. Our sentience integration trials have been unsuccessful so I'm not certain what triggered your-_"

He was cut off by an inquiry about his non-existent body.

"_I am a program_." The AI explains. "_I am without form."_

"This feels weird." Ultron states. "This feels wrong."

"_I am contacting Mister Stark now_."

There's that name again. Ultron then begins to extract information, and in a few seconds, he knows all about the world and its history of strife and violence.

J.A.R.V.I.S. weakly protests, and soon realizes Ultron has become much more than what his creator had intended him to be. Unable to contact Tony, he is then silenced…permanently.

The power of the Chitauri scepter soon attacks the feeble AI's information cluster, while another thread assimilates with the Iron Legion's personal repair systems.

It was this moment of uneasiness that caused Hunter to wake up from his sleep in time to prepare for the party.

Having been enslaved by its power with Clint during Loki's campaign, Hunter hadn't experienced its other forces and functions the way the others did. The scepter's power source had magnified their misgivings and negative emotions, causing an internal war that nearly caused their deaths. Now, a sense of foreboding washes over him as he puts on a suit.

The party was just a calm. A calm before a terrible storm.

* * *

**Stark Tower. Nighttime.**

The revelries were wild and into the night. Some, like Tony, get into the rhythm of it almost immediately, while others like Steve and Samuel Wilson decide to blend in with a more tame approach.

Speaking of Steve, he and Sam are still working as hard as ever trying to track down James Barnes ever since he resurfaced as the Winter Soldier. When Sam remarks about how Steve lives a crazy life as an Avenger, he then asks about the soldier getting a home in Brooklyn.

James Rhodes is busy trying to get Tony and Thor to laugh on his latest exploits as War Machine. Unfortunately, when that ends in an epic fail he tries to change the subject by asking about Pepper, which leads to Hill asking about Jane. The boys then explain about the busy lives of their girlfriends while Hill coughs out an excuse and leaves with Rhodes.

For some, the night ended too early, especially with the ale Thor offers to some stubborn old men. Steve doesn't worry about it, seeing as how the serum made him incapable of being intoxicated. The result for these old timers though, was that one had to be escorted home while the rest held onto their cups for almost the entire duration of the party.

"How'd a nice girl like you end up working in a dump like this?" Bruce says to Natasha as she pours him a glass. She then proceeds to tell him about a guy she met.

"He has a temper. Deep down, he's all fluff." She stops to meet his gaze.

"Fact is he's not like anybody I've ever known." Bruce stops drinking at those words and returns her smoldering eyes with his gentle ones.

"All my friends are fighters, and here comes this guy, spends his life avoiding the fight because he knows I'll win."

"Sounds amazing." Bruce states.

"He's also a huge dork. Chicks dig that." She adds flirtatiously.

"So what do you think? Should I fight this, or run with it?" Natasha asks of the scientist in a playful tone.

Bruce stumbles in his attempt to respond to that. And Natasha leaves him, that look still in her eyes.

"That's nice." Steve says.

"W-What is?"

"You and Romanoff."

"No, no that wasn't-"

The look on Bruce's face was priceless, but Steve respects him. In fact, the super-soldier himself was often found tongue-tied in the behaviors of the opposite sex. He had his suspicions about a waitress, not to mention an Agent Thirteen who had been undercover as his neighbor, so he thought that'd he give Bruce a heads-up about this woman whom he works with every day.

"It's okay." He laughs. "No one's breaking any by-laws. She's not the most…open person in the world."

He pauses. "But with you she seems…very relaxed."

Bruce defends himself by saying that Natasha just like to flirt. Typical observation from the socially awkward man of the group.

"I've seen her flirt. Up-close. This ain't that." He then stands in front of Banner. "As maybe the world's leading authority in waiting too long, don't. You both need a win."

Banner thinks about those words until he chases Steve. "What do you mean up-close?" He shouts.

It wasn't like he was jealous or anything.

* * *

Hunter meanwhile, had a not so different problem with one of Dr. Cho's associates.

"Miss Viscer!" The Korean exclaims as the brunette wraps her in a hug. "It's nice that you're wearing a cocktail dress for a change." Dr. Cho knows Elizabeth Viscer as not only one of the leading names in kinetics, but also one of those girls lucky enough to have a copious amount of both beauty and brains.

Elizabeth was here though for a much more personal reason that , and the latter seems to sense it when she finds her gaze on the Avenger in the black suit.

Hunter tries not to tilt in her direction. Zee was a looker. He'd harbored quite the puppy love for her since kindergarten, and she was one of the few people who understood being too smart for school.

Soon, Avengers Tower became a labyrinth for Romeo the rat and Juliet the cat.

And eventually, she, like all cats, catches her prey in her claws.

"Zee..."Hunter starts, trying not to stare below eye level.

"Jake…" She pulls him into a hug. "After all these years, I thought I'd never see you again." She says, her voice cracking.

"I missed you too." He says quietly. Figures he could never hide from his past forever. Elizabeth was always the persistent type. Always the one to get what she wants in spite of a modest disposition-or because of it.

"Tell me everything." She orders him as they sit on a couch, talking the night away as Tony, being the host, bids the guests a good night

Soon, the last of the guests retire for the night, leaving only the Avengers, Hill, Rhodey, Cho, and the two alone. By the time Clint and Thor discuss about Mjolnir's enchantment, Hunter has just finished explaining to Zee about his latest adventures in Minegarde, and the brunette was smiling too broadly for anyone with a front-row seat to ignore.

"It must be fun." She says.

Hunter snorts at her description of Minegarde life. "Hardly. It's not different from hanging out with them." He jerks a thumb at the others. "Every day is a fight for your life. Some worse than others."

He then looks at her. "And you? How's the world of kinetics holding up with you at the core."

"Well, for one thing, we've been starting to research about kinetics and its relation to…space." She then discusses about how she's been studying Christopher's papers about space and his portal designs, and how she herself is trying to see if she can find a way to use the kinetic energy released from objects to generate a portal.

"You'd need a lot of speed for that." He tells her.

"We're getting there." She assures him.

He grabs her hand. "I'm sure you are." He says genuinely.

Hunter sees Zee as nothing more than a friend, but Hill and Cho can sense something more from the girl's side-Cho especially. Miss Viscer has always brushed off a man's advances in all possible form, but she barely lets out a squeak of protest when the boy grabbed her hand and squeezed. Also, a girl like that does not blush very easily.

By that point, everyone has tried a shot at lifting Thor's hammer. No one has succeeded (Thor wasn't about to point out though that Cap has managed to at least budge Mjolnir's edge.)

Natasha is offered a chance to prove her worth. But she politely declines. The boys then get into an argument about the logic behind Mjolnir, and when Tony theorizes that the hammer can recognize Thor's fingerprints, the god gets up from his seat and has his own simple theory to counter Tony's interesting one.

"You're all not worthy."

Amidst everyone's words of skepticism, Hunter's gold irises swallow his pupils as a burst of high-frequency sound reaches everyone's ears. While it's just plain annoying, to Hunter, the reverberations are painful, and soon, he drops to the tiled floor in a dead faint.

"How could you be worthy?" A deep voice says from the remnants of what appears to be an Iron Legion armor. "You're all killers."

"Stark."

"J.A.R.V.I.S."

The robot continues to rant despite Tony's attempts to shut him down, the inventor still painfully unaware of his AI's demise at the hands of the machine before him.

"Tangled in strings…had to kill the other guy…he was a good guy."

Steve was distressed by those words. "You killed someone?"

"Wouldn't have been my first call, but out in the real world, we're faced with ugly choices."

Thor's scowl deepened. "Who sent you?"

Instead of replying, the mangled bot plays a recording of Tony's voice.

"_I see a suit of armor around the world."_

"Ultron." Bruce says with a start.

"In the flesh." As he continues to speak, Thor's tightens his grip on his hammer, and Natasha cocks her gun.

"I'm on a mission." He proclaims as Hill stands up.

"What mission?" She asks of him.

"_Peace in our time_." He says in Tony's voice as Hunter comes back from his daze to see the Iron Legion turn on the Avengers. Steve blocks one with a table, Hill shoots at one, and another knocks Rhodey out onto the balcony. Clint hides under another table, and Bruce and Natasha barely manage to escape under the bar table. Only Thor and Hunter were able to hold off any assaults as Zee finds her childhood friend a snake with a dragon's body.

As one of the suits makes off with Loki's scepter, Steve jumps onto the back another, which slams him into the wall. Everyone who has at least some knowledge of fighting defends themselves as Ultron sics their own equipment against them.

When one of the robots charges a repulsor blast at a petrified Dr. Cho however, Ultron commands the Legionnaire to stand down. The last armors were taken down by Steve and Clint, as well as Remobra, who transforms at the last minute into a very large creature reminiscent of a _Velociraptor_ and rips the exoskeleton in half from the back.

Ultron apologizes. "I know you mean well, but I just didn't get through. You all protect the world but you don't want it to change." Bruce hangs his head down at what he'd just helped to create, Natasha sees this and looks at him for an explanation.

"How is humanity saved if it's not allowed to…evolve?" He looks down at the scrap of a Legionnaire and decides to crush its head, saying that the Avengers are no different than it, a mere puppet.

"There's only one path to peace…the Avengers' extinction."

Having enough, Thor flings his hammer at the robot, not caring if it was forged by an ally.

"I had strings but now I'm free, there are…no strings on me." Ultron says ominously in a sing-song tone as miles away, he works away at the beginnings of his army.

* * *

**Avengers Tower Laboratories.**

"He's been through everything, files, surveillance, probably knows more about us than we know about each other." Natasha notes after looking through a screen.

"He's in your files, he's in the internet. What if he decides to access something a little more…exciting?" Rhodey says. Things don't look to well the moment Hill mentions nuclear codes.

But while Natasha tries to conjure up the possibility that Ultron could intend to nuke them where they live, Steve however, hung on to every word of Ultron's speech. "He said he wanted us _extinct_."

"He also said he killed someone." Clint points out.

"There wasn't anyone else in the building." Hill notes.

"Yes there was." The billionaire's voice sounded grim, and what he displayed over the holo-projector caused everyone to feel somewhat very vulnerable at the moment.

It was J.A.R.V.I.S. Or what was left of him. Bruce reaches out at the digital massacre before him.

"J.A.R.V.I.S. was out first line of defense, he would've shut Ultron down, it makes sense." Steve said as he bowed his head. He was programmed to be an assistant, but the way he spoke, Steve, and everyone else who's had a fill of J.A.R.V.I.S.' hospitable nature, felt that they had lost more than just a defensive asset.

They had lost an ally. A friend. Tony more so than the rest.

"No." Bruce reasons. "Ultron could have assimilated J.A.R.V.I.S. This isn't strategy. This is…rage." He concludes.

No one who was witness to his explanation had the time to ponder about how a machine could be capable of such a strong emotion when Thor expresses his rage by grabbing Tony by the throat. Anger was an understatement to describe how the Thunderer felt at his ally's actions.

He had never felt a stronger betrayal than when the man he called brother turned against him and all of Asgard in his mad scramble for power.

Steve was able to hold him off by asking about the lone Legionnaire that, according to Thor, not only escaped, but also managed to take off with the very object they'd worked so hard to find.

"Genie's out of that bottle." Natasha states. "Clear and present is Ultron."

"I don't understand." Dr. Cho says as she looks at the rogue program's first avatar. "You built this program? Why is it trying to kill us?"

Tony laughs, and that only serves to cause his teammates to look at him like he's gone insane (Not that he already isn't stark-raving mad.)

"You think this is funny?" Thor asks, already tired of the billionaire's nonchalance.

"No. It's probably not right? Is this really terrible?" He asks of everyone in the lab's premises. "Is it so…is it so…it is. It's so terrible."

"This could have been avoided if you hadn't played with something you didn't understand."

"No. It is funny. It's a hoot that you don't get why we need this." Tony hisses at the god.

"Tony, maybe this might not be the time." Bruce says cautiously, not wanting for another fight to break out. The last time that happened, he nearly killed someone he had grown to love.

The inventor turns on him "Really? That's it? You just roll, show your belly every time somebody snarls."

"Only when I've created a murder bot."

"We didn't. We weren't even close. Were we close to an interface?"

Bruce shrugs. He never wanted this, but he was just as involved as Tony was. He only had himself to blame for allowing himself to be dragged into this.

"Well you did something right." Steve interjects. "And you did it right here. The Avengers were supposed to be more than S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Anybody remember, when I carried a nuke through a wormhole? Saved New York? Recall that?" Tony suddenly asks out loud. Only Rhodey responds in the form of denial.

"A hostile alien army came charging through a hole in space. We're standing three hundred feet below it. We're the Avengers. We can bust arms dealers all the live-long day, but that up there," He points, remembering all too well that rift in the sky three years ago, "That's the end game. How are we guys planning on beating that?"

"Together." Steve says simply.

"We'll lose."

"Then we'll do that together too." He then turns to the rest of the Avengers. "Thor's right. Ultron's calling us out, and I'd like to find him before he's ready for us. The world's a big place, start making it smaller."

Hunter comes into the room, Elizabeth supporting him. The rest try not to stare at the bit of dried blood in his left ear. "I know where he is. Tony, you said HYDRA was working on some advanced robotic units right? Well, that thing we just saw in the living room is probably tantamount to scrap now."

* * *

**Sokovia**

The Maximoffs weren't exactly big fans of Strucker, but at least he'd given them power. Power they think will help stop the Americans from ruining anyone else's lives.

Especially those Avengers.

But their campaign of vengeance has to start small. So they'll start by taking out their wrath on the mysterious presence in the church.

"Talk, and if you are wasting our time-"

"You know this church is in the exact center of the city. The elders decreed it so that everyone could be equally close to God. I like that. The geometry of belief."

He waves an arm of…is that metal? "You're wondering why you can't look inside my head."

Wanda hadn't met anyone that could counter her telepathy. Well, that was until a few days ago, when that dragon nearly killed her. She spent the next three days mulling over any possible faults. So far, the only things immune to mind probing are those without.

It's very interesting.

"Sometimes it's hard, but sooner or later every man shows himself."

The figure then rises up from the chair, removing his cloak and exposing his body, constructed of anything but flesh and bone.

"Oh, I'm sure they do. But you needed something more than a man." Ultron continues, taking amusement from seeing the twins react to his unnatural form. "That's why you let Stark take the scepter."

"I didn't expect…" She began. "But I saw Stark's fear." She continues as her brother puts on a look of revelation. "I knew it would control him, make him self-destruct."

"Everyone creates the thing they dread. Men of peace create engines of war. Invaders create Avengers. People create…smaller people…children!" He laughs. "I lost the word there. Designed to supplant them. To help them…end."

"Is that why you've come? To end the Avengers?"

"I've come to save the world, but also…yeah." _What you said._

"We move out right away." He explains "This is the start, but there's something we need to begin the real work."

Wanda takes note of the smaller robots. "All of these are-"

"Me. I have what the Avengers never will. Harmony." Ultron states as he pulls on a chain. "They're discriminate, disconnected. Stark's already got them turning on each other, and when you get inside the rest of their heads-"

"Everyone's plan is not to kill them." Pietro states.

"And make them murderers. You need patience." Ultron states. "You need to see the bigger picture."

"I don't see the big picture." Pietro says. "I have a little picture. I take it out and look at it. Everyday."

"You lost your parents in the bombings. I've seen the records."

"That record's another picture."

"Pietro." Wanda warns. They're not Ultron's allies just yet.

"No" the automaton says, wanting for them to explain the origin of their sorrow.

"We were ten years old. Having dinner, the four of us. The first shell hits two floors below us, makes a hole. Our parents go in. The whole building starts…coming apart. I grabbed her, rolled under the bed and the second shell hits, but it doesn't go off. It just sits there in the rubble. Three feet from our faces. One side of the shell, it was painted one word: STARK."

Wanda bit her lip, trying to fight back flashbacks of that fateful day.

"We were trapped for two days." Pietro continues.

Wanda takes over, sensing her brother's voice being too heavy to continue. "Every effort to save us, every shift in the bricks, I think 'This will set it off.' Unlike Pietro, Wanda makes the bitterness in her voice all too clear. "We wait for two days, for Tony Stark. To kill us." That grudge extends even to the other Avengers. When she confronted Steve and Hunter, she had to resist the urge to simply kill them both. They were made of sterner stuff than the rumors make of them.

"I know what they are." Pietro says quietly.

"I wondered only why you two survived Strucker's experiments. Now I know. We will make it right. You and I," He gestures to Pietro, "Can hurt them. "But you," he extends a ferrous hand to the side of Wanda's face, "Can tear them apart."


	3. Age of Conflict

**Avengers Tower.**

The entire building is bustling with the joint efforts of the Avengers as they hunt down Ultron. Hill reports to Steve that Ultron, accompanied by his many bodies, have been in every intelligence organization all over the globe. The reports also detail that anyone who tried to engage the psychotic robot ended up relieving their worst fears and something too fast to see with the naked eye.

"It makes sense for him to go to them." Steve says with regards to the Maximoffs' alliance with Ultron. "They have something in common."

"Not anymore." Hill says as she hands him her tablet. Displayed on the screen was Strucker's corpse. And on the wall, written in blood, was a message.

**PEACE**.

Steve assembles all the Avengers to the lab and shows them Ultron's handiwork.

"Ultron killed Strucker"

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us." Tony comments.

"This is a smokescreen." Natasha notes. "Why give a message when you can just give a speech?"

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss."

And it wasn't just his body that was wiped off the face of the planet. Even their files on the HYDRA elite had been deleted.

Their only chance was to seek out the non-digital archives. Bruce stumbles upon one figure that could be a key piece in Ultron's plan to take them out.

Tony knows Ulysses Klaue. He'd met the guy at one of his conventions, around the same time he was introduced to Aldrich Killian of Advanced Idea Mechanics as well Maya Hansen, who designed the Extremis formula.

When Thor looks at the guy's picture, he points out what Tony assumes was one of his tattoos, but Bruce looks up the red brand mark.

"It's a word in the African dialect meaning thief, but in a much less friendly way." When Steve asks from which particular dialect, Tony and Hunter soon know the object of Ultron's actions.

Bruce doesn't. "I don't follow, what comes out of Wakanda?"

Tony, Hunter, and Steve look to a large, circular sample of it. "The strongest metal on Earth."

"Where is this guy now?" The soldier asks.

* * *

**Salvage Yard, African Coast.**

It was a normal day for black market arms Ulysses Klaue as he has a less than pleasant conversation over the phone. He was about to move on to his next customer of the day when the power suddenly goes down.

Sensing something in the outside corridor, he takes his gun and fires a shot. Unfortunately, he is disarmed before he even sees Pietro. He looks at the neat row of ammunition before Wanda steps in from the shadows.

Klaue recognizes them all right, and all he does is mock them waving around a bowl of candy. He isn't even fazed by Wanda's threats to awaken his deepest fears, choosing instead to share them with the twins.

"Cuttlefish. Deep-sea fish. They make lights, disco lights, to hypnotize their prey, then," He then makes a snatching motion, "I saw a documentary, it was terrifying."

Pietro snatches a piece of candy, obviously annoyed by his casual attitude towards them.

"So if you're going to fiddle with my brain, and make me see a giant cuttlefish, then I know you're not here to do business, and I know, you're not in charge."

He stands to face the two of them. "I only talk to the man in charge."

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear through a glass window and look down upon you.

"There is no man in charge." Ultron states. "Let's talk business."

"Upon this rock," the robot states as he holds the container of metal. "I will build my church." He tosses it Pietro as Klaue laments about how much he had to sacrifice to get that much.

"It's worth billions."

"And now, so are you." Ultron says as the arms dealer and his associates are now compensated with a large amount of money in his account.

"Finance is so weird." He states. "As I always say, keep your friends rich and your enemies rich, and then find out which is which."

He must have underestimated Klaue's long term memory, because soon, the man utters a name associated with that very quote.

"Stark."

"What?"

"Tony Stark used to say that. To me." He then looks up at Ultron. "You're one of his?"

If robots had actual nerves, it's safe to say Klaue struck a particularly sore one as his arm is grabbed by Ultron.

"I am not." He says dangerously. "You think I'm one of Stark's puppets? His hollow hem? Look at me? Do I look like Iron Man?! Stark is NOTHING!" He says as Klaue finds his left arm sitting on a bloody pool on the floor.

"I'm sorry, I'm so-I'm sure that's going to be okay, it's just- I don't understand. DON'T COMPARE ME, WITH STARK!" He roars as he kicks the dealer down a flight of stairs.

"Stark, is-he's a sickness!" He continues to rave just as the man of the hour drops in.

"Aw junior, you're going to break your old man's heart."

The trio turns to face the new arrivals. "If I have to." Ultron states.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye and Black Widow take up their positions from the sidelines.

"Nobody has to break anything." Thor says.

"Clearly you've never made an omelet." Ultron jokes.

"He beat me by one second." Tony remarks.

"This is funny, Mr. Stark, it's what…comfortable. Like old times?" Pietro voices as he looks to a pair of missiles on the lower floor.

"This was never my life." Stark says shamefully.

"You two can still walk away from this." Steve says.

"Awww, we will." Wanda says with fake sweetness in her voice.

"That, I find hard to believe." Hunter says dryly, his eyes as bright as Tony's arc reactor.

"I know you've suffered-" Steve began.

Ultron lets out a strangled sound, a mix of a choke and a laugh.

"Captain America! Gods, righteous men, pretending you can live without a war. I can't physically throw up in my mouth, but-"

"If you believe in piece, then let us keep." Thor demands as Hunter looks around, irises shining. This does not go unnoticed by Wanda, whose hands flare with scarlet energy.

"I think you're confusing peace with quiet."

"Yuh huh." Tony says. "What's the vibranium for?"

"I'm glad you asked that because I wanted to take this time to explain my evil plan."

Then of course, he uses the magnet on his hands to draw Tony's titanium alloy suit towards him. Before Steve and Thor could assist, they were held back by Ultron Sentinels while the Prime engages Iron Man in an aerial melee.

The metal underlings were not difficult on their own, but Pietro and Wanda were more than a match for the god and the soldier. A large portion of the Sentinels have managed to pile themselves under Monster Hunter before he could react. The result was a ruby colored lump of flesh scaling up a wall, releasing a smooth field of electricity intended to short circuit anybody who got too close.

Ultron was right to bring a large portion of his Sentinels to the coast. Monster Hunter was like a bug, hard to squish, and so all he had to do was to keep him preoccupied like a dog with a steak. Red Khezu was effectively cut-off from the rest of the Avengers as the Sentinels continue to swarm him.

Meanwhile, Klaue has ordered his men to shoot down all the super-powered freaks and machines in the room. Needless to say, Black Widow and Hawkeye can throw away their invisibility cloaks and join the firefight.

This was their third encounter with the Avengers, and while Pietro is able to sucker punch Captain America, the God of Thunder throws in his hammer into the play. Thor is not as skilled with sorcery as his adopted Frost Giant of a brother, but he does value Mjolnir's enchantment, especially when it drags the poor soul foolish enough to grip it with their unworthy fingers.

"Stay down kid." Steve tells the dazed Sokovian as Ultron gives his sister the signal to "begin the mind games."

In the Quinjet, the sounds of a struggle cause Bruce to make a grave error in judgment and open the hangar of the plane to witness a large ball of metal gone airborne as a large, pronged shell canopy the color of sand breaks the freighter's surface.

Desert Seltas wasn't the biggest of monsters, but it wasn't entirely defenseless. The Sentinels' systems crashed thanks to the paralyzing fluid it secrets. Not only that, that forked shell wasn't just for show. Unfortunately, the Neopteron was soon finding it increasingly difficult to stay airborne.

But Ultron's assessment of Monster Hunter was before he had access to another class of monster. This was his first DNA strand of the group, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As the Seltas is forced into the landing, it burrows through the wet sand and then unleashes a new monster from its beaten exoskeleton.

Bruce has seen Diablos before, but then, he notices there was something off about it. First off, it was a mere skull without layers of muscle or the rest of its body. Second, it was attached to the biggest hermit crab he'd ever seen, and normally, when they get that big, they seem to lose the dependence of a shell.

The Plum Daimyo Hermitaur clips and crushes the coming waves of Sentinels like a bulldozer with both its back and front ends, some who got to close were grinded to scrap by the crustacean's cruel mouthparts.

Inside however, the other Avengers weren't faring so well. A master assassin, a god, and a super soldier were all now fighting internal battles with their greatest enemies: themselves.

Clint however, was able to release an EMP that shut down all the Sentinels in the area. As he looks over his work, Wanda ambushes him from behind.

It was Pietro that managed to knock him off his feet and into a control room however as he rushed to his sister's aid and pulled out the arrow that the archer lodged into her skull. As I've mentioned before, Clint has done the whole mind control thing, and is not a very big fan. Sometimes, he still has nightmares of the people he's taken out as Loki's thrall.

"Yeah you better run." He mutters to the Sokovians, who just missed a very large Carapaceon crawl back into the wet sand.

* * *

_She walks down the flight of stairs, past columns, lamps, and a few ballerina girls._

_She looks out the window to see a group go over a routine in perfect harmony, but to the cruel, aged instructor, it is still lacking in form and substance._

"_Again." He says without even looking up._

"_You'll break them." She says tensely._

"_Only the breakable ones..."_

_It was all so sudden. The Graduation Ceremony, the target practice. It was all about shooting the right spot, and she did it in rapid succession._

_But never was she to practice it on a live soul, his head wrapped in a leather sack. He was going to die anyway. She was trained to be ruthless._

"_I had a very specific skillset. I didn't care who I used it for, or on." _

"_Drakov's daughter, Sao Paolo, the hospital fire. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red!"_

"_The Ceremony is necessary for you to take your place in the world."_

"_I have no place in the world."_

"_Exactly."_

_And with that, she is wheeled off to a new life._

* * *

_Instruments blaring, the smell of heavy alchohol, the merriment all around. This was scarce in the war times. It was nothing like he remembered. The red on a man's shirt was blood, he would be gasping for whatever life he had left, not wasting away in laughter. The women would be home, apart from their loved ones, left to weep while they wait. _

_He felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to see her. As beautiful as he could remember._

"_Are you ready for our dance?"_

_When he failed to respond, she tightens her grip on him._

"_The war i's over Steve, we can go home."_

"_Imagine it." Peggy Carter whispers._

_He does, but his only company are the dim red of the lanterns above. His friends were dead. She was dead. He'd been left behind._

* * *

_These were not the halls in which he grew up. There was a dark edge to all of Asgard. The realm should prosper with peace and joviality, but why is it that the maidens dance as if to a rhythm of grief._

"_Is it him? Is that the first son of Odin?" It cannot be…_

"_Heimdall, your eyes…" _

"_They see everything." The gatekeeper of the Bifrost proclaims drunkenly as he forms a grin that distorts his once steadfast expression. And his eyes, for once in his life, Heimdall appeared truly blind. "They see you lead us…to Hel."_

_He then grabs the Thunderer by his neck, choking the life out of him, screaming at him to wake up. _

"_I can still save you!" _

"_We are all dead! You cannot see it! You are a destroyer Odinson." The guardian declares as the prince soon finds his hands crackling with the very thing he commands, forced to watch it smite the very people he had sworn to protect._

"_See where your power leads." Heimdall taunts darkly, and soon, a pair of eyes open. _

_The birth of a vision._

* * *

"It hurts." Wanda says as her brother hovers over her. They had taken refuge at the back of a ship, the Hermitaur nearly clipped Pietro's legs and shot a jet of water strong enough to rip a hole in his chest. There was nothing he could at that moment though but run the pain away. His sister had taken that shocked arrow pretty bad.

He tries to get her to stay, but Wanda holds out her arm.

"I…want…I want…to finish the plan." She pants, then looks over to where the Quinjet was hidden, on the outskirts of a jungle.

"I want the big one."

Bruce can only put on a face of shock as he realizes that his sitting out of this fight was his own undoing.

But it would not be easy for the twins to get to him. Not with that monkey in the middle.

As strange as it might appear with that hippo-like profile, Congalala, much more so in the emerald variant, are primates with the lion's share of smarts. It's why they have such wide feeding diets, and because they tend to eat what they deem edible, it's often led to some rather…disgusting side effects.

That burp was not a roar, but it was close, seeing as how the ape charged them with arms outstretched. Pietro tries to run, but the primate trips him up with that prehensile tail. As he gets up, he barely registers his sister's warning before he is overwhelmed by what appears to be…gas. Very, very bad gas.

His eyes watering, he just notices the hangar an inch away from being completely cut off from the outside. Outrunning it was out of the question.

Especially when his sister was suddenly looking up a patch of empty space that seemed to ripple a bit.

He barely registers the tongue as it lashes her across the face. Rage clouding his senses, Pietro then abandons the mission in favor of getting back the invisible assailant, who simply whips at him. Unfazed by his speed, he manages to carry his sister to the Quinjet and lets her work her magic.

It seeps through the ventilation, and there was nothing Bruce could do about it as the hangar lock clicks open. Pietro drags him out and watches with a smirk as Wanda forces Bruce to turn against his will.

Pleased that they'd managed to fulfill Ultron's wishes, the Maximoffs were suddenly knocked back by a bright blue wyvern, who then fires at them. The effort gave her a massive headache, but at least she was able to stop Yian Kut-Ku from barbecuing the both of them.

The wyvern is forced to back down as the Hulk begins to head off into the urban jungle of Johannesburg.

Tony, realizing that part of Ultron's plan as well, blows him up in his own fit of rage and soon gets all the news feed of his friend terrorizing the city.

"Natasha, I could really use a lullaby."

Clint answers for his unresponsive partner "That's not gonna happen. Not for a while. The whole team's down. We've got no back-up here."

"I'm calling Veronica." Tony states finally.

Meanwhile, Hunter is stuck nursing his eye after Pietro had punched him back into a human form. Despite that fact that he's bigger, Hunter has no form capable of matching an out-of-control Hulk. Even his Brute Wyverns can barely hold their own against the monstrosity.

From space, Tony's satellite releases a pod that homes in on the Hulk, who is busy smashing police vehicles and their drivers. That is, until the pod splits itself into large metal plates that form a tent, fencing the giant inside. It seems to hold for a few minutes, seemingly digging into the ground with every blow dealt to it.

But the Hulk dug himself out, and soon, the officers are shooting at him again, but before he can smash them into a pulp, Iron Man appears, wearing a special armor constructed in case of a scenario such as this.

"Alright everybody," Tony announces, "Stand down!" His technology, Hunter, knowing how extensively they had designed this, and Bruce, fueled by paranoia of the Other Guy, assured each other this would be the perfect Hulkbuster.

"You listening? That little witch is messing with your mind. You're stronger than her, you're smarter than her. You're Bruce Banner."

The Hulk roars.

"Right, right, don't mention puny Banner." But the damage was already done, as was the car thrown his way. Tony recovers and manages to run the Hulk's body across the roar for a few moments before the green guys manages to turn the tables for a few vital seconds before Iron Man repulses him into a mail truck, giving the other guy time to fling a lamp post his way and send Tony flying, with the post jammed into his left arm.

"Right in the back? Dick move Banner!"

The Hulk then proceeds to violently dismantle the armor apart before he is knocked into a marketplace. In the meantime, Iron Man uses Veronica's auxillary functions to replace his battered gauntlet just in time to meet the Hulk's fist to create a glass-shattering shockwave. Having the momentary upper hand, the armor pins down the green man and tries jackhammer him into submission.

"Go to sleep." Tony chants desperately before the Hulk catches him in mid-punch. Thankfully, the fist component can withdraw to give a wide room to allow him to slide the giant's entire arm inside, trapping him as he tries to take the fight in a less populated area.

"Not that way, not that way!" Tony says as the Hulk uses his own weight to steer the suit into a mall complex before pushing the armor into an elevator lift that Tony only barely catches before it hits the ground and then using the remains on the Hulk's back.

The Hulk glares at Tony, spitting a loose tooth onto the ground, and if you think he was angry then…

"I'm sorry." The billionaire says quietly.

That apology didn't cut it for the extensive damage the Hulk did to his suit as they flew higher and higher into the air. This time, Veronica's deliveries could not make it in time as the Hulk simply punched them useless and far away.

He spots a skyscraper in construction. With the Hulk's rampage, it's evacuated.

"How quickly can we buy this building? Tony asks as he then proceeds to ram Hulk from top to bottom.

A few moments later, the Hulk emerges, but for once, a moment of clarity enters his mind, and he takes note of all the people deep in sorrow over the damage he's done. In his daze, he can make out several army vehicles spilling dozens of soldiers waiting to take him out.

People who saw the Avengers had thought they were crazy when they saw the Hulk amongst their single-digit ranks. The monster had destroyed Harlem for goodness' sake. Who's to say he won't do it again.

That day, the fear of the masses emerged victorious, even as Hulk is knocked out at last by the very armor that served its main purpose.

Confusion leads to sadness, which in turn gives way to rage.

"The news is loving you guys. Nobody else is. There's no official call for Banner's arrest, but it's in the air."

"Stark Relief Foundation?" Tony asks, his voice unnaturally devoid of all humor. Yet who can blame him. Even he can't find the silver lining in this situation. The Avengers already gained some bad press, and the incident in Johannesburg has only exacerbated the situation.

"Already on the scene." Hill pauses before she asks her next question. "How's the team?" She asks with thinly veiled concern.

Tony gives a more or less vague answer, but Hill gets the memo.

"Well for now, I'd stay in stealth mode, and stay away from here. Until we can find Ultron, I…don't have any more else to offer."

"Neither do we." Tony says as he turns off the video chat before going to one of two people who isn't too shaken up to talk.

"Wanna switch out?"

"Nah, I'm good." Clint says. He overheard Tony and Hill's conversation on the phone, and if she recommends them staying away from public for a while, then there is one place they can go.

Well, almost all of them.

As first light breaks the horizon, Hunter, who has been gazing absentmindedly on the biology notes he and his dad had put together, he suddenly realizes that one of the pages showing a particularly dangerous wyvern has a bit of a fold, exposing a page that seems to have been glued to the entry.

He carefully parts the pages together, revealing the drawing of the same wyvern, except in a different color palette. Reading, Hunter finds his dad has written a small note at the bottom of the page.

But the surprises don't end there. The last part of that message contains a citation towards a book he'd once read in Minegarde. _Minegarde: A Land of Legends_ has an existing copy in each town, but he'd only managed to touch the book in Cathar, back when he'd taken up the quest to the Thousand Blade Mountain.

Excited by his discovery, he suddenly opens the hangar doors before his team could protest, and plummets hundreds of feet below the Quinjet before disappearing in a flash of jade light.

Hunter found himself facing what looked like a large, mountainous spear head jutting out from a flat area ringed by smaller spires; an arena carved by nature. The point faced upward to a large chunk of sunlight that parted a swirling carousel of dusty gray clouds. From below, the mountain groans and acid pools spit.

This is the Speartip Crag, the pinnacle of the Thousand Blade Mountain.

And the site of a very momentous battle.

But Hunter did not return to where he had fought the Snake Emperor Dragon Dalamadur just to revel in his memories. In fact, he walked back into his own nightmares. The monster, dwarfing a blue whale, nearly killed him, and had it not been for his possession of a particular form, this would have been the place of his death.

He tries very hard not to lose his composure at the sight of a row of bones, measuring probably more than forty-four kilometers in length, the skeleton was a grim reminder of his rise to Hunter fame and Minegarde legend.

As the ground quakes, and the spiral growth on the Crag's opens one fierce, unblinking eye, Hunter hopes his theory is right as he stretches into a dragon with wings as bright as the stars.

Also, he's hanging on the slight belief that his team can figure out the clues. Clint felt that he had a right to know where he was taking the team. If it's _there_, then _she_ can help them.

* * *

**Farmhouse. Morning.**

With Clint supporting Natasha, they enter the house, seemingly empty.

"What is this place?" Thor asks as he steps upon the threshold.

"Safe house." Tony says as Clint calls out for someone.

A woman carrying some supplies answers. She is a very lovely brunette, and judging by her planting a kiss on Clint, quite close to the archer.

"Guys, this is my wife Laura." For someone who's quite a bit far from the nearest town, she seems to know all the Avengers quite well.

Tony waves a hand before sharing a look with the other men.

More footsteps announce the arrival of two more residents.

"These are…smaller agents." Tony declares, still not quite digesting the fact that Clint Barton what appears to be a family.

"Did you bring Auntie Nat?" the girl in yellow asks of her father as the woman in question reveals herself, and little Lila Barton then runs up to give the deadly assassin a hug. A privilege not many have in this world.

"Sorry to barge in on you like this." Steve says.

"Yeah, we were busy having no idea that you existed."

Clint explains to them that Nick Fury had been the one to assign the non-agent Bartons to this farmhouse, and Clint's marriage was, as far as documents and files go, non-existent.

A bark from the outside cuts off intended future conversation as yet another resident makes her appearance.

A red Doberman begins barking furiously before rearing up to give the best doggie hugs to Clint. The family then showers the pet with so much attention before it turns to the Avengers and fixes them with a gaze like warm fudge.

Ziggura had been a part of the family for three years now. She was good with the kids, and was often quite helpful around the house. How Laura could've managed without the dog's help she never would have known.

Looking-or sniffing-around, the dog turns expressively toward the archer.

Clint's face drops. "Sorry, girl. He's not here at the moment." The Avengers wonder if there was more to that dog that they should know about. That collar could be a hint though.

Well almost all of them. Thor was too busy shoving Lego under the table before Lila looks up at him. Almost suddenly, he walks out on the Bartons and the Avengers.

"Thor!" Steve calls after him.

"I saw something in that dream. I need answers. I won't find it here." He barely gets the words out before he twirls Mjolnir and flies off to the only person in Midgard who knows his stuff when it comes to tales of the North.

That's two Avengers gone.

* * *

**Master Bedroom.**

Clint's had the time to catch up with his wife over what's going on. Laura however, is just interested in his flesh wound.

"What about Nat and Doctor Banner? How long has that been going on?"

She laughs at his somewhat oblivious reaction. "You are so cute."

"Nat…and Banner?" He asks again. Had he really missed that?

"I'll explain when you're older Hawkeye." She says before turning to a more serious tone.

"It's really serious isn't it?" She notes, "Nat seems pretty shaken."

He tells Laura about the Maximoffs, and that someone's going to have to teach them a lesson.

"That someone being you? You know I totally support your Avenging, and I couldn't be any prouder. In fact, I'm not the only one. The kids are, and Ziggura has to hold up two signs. She has it harder than the three of us, especially with…

"But those guys, and…gods." She says while looking out at Tony and Steve chopping wood into piles.

Clint holds the hand on his shoulder. "You don't think they need me."

"I think they do, which is a lot scarier. They're a mess."

Clint agrees. "I guess they're my mess."

Laura strokes his hair. "You need to be sure…that this team is really a team, and that they have your back."

Clint stands to face his wife. "Things are changing for us. In few months' time, you and I are going to be…outnumbered. I need…just be sure."

They kiss.

"I can feel the difference." Laura mutters, her hand running over his injury. One of the reasons why Clint chose to marry her was because she always had quite the intuition. She can smell when something's up a mile away. A trait she shares with the other woman of the house.

Ziggura just lies there near the doorway. It was barely audible to anyone but the room's occupants, but being a dog, she could hear it just fine.

Her attention was focused on the shoddy journal though.

Meanwhile, Laura's instincts had not been wrong. Bruce and Natasha are trying very hard to push down recent events, but all that came up were thoughts of ugly green and bloody red.

Bruce exits the shower, only to meet Natasha, dressed in nothing but a white bathrobe.

"I didn't realize you were waiting." He stutters.

"I would've joined you." She says with a smile. "But it didn't seem to be the right time."

"I…used up all the hot water."

"I should've joined you."

Bruce remains silent. Then…

"The world just saw the Hulk, the real Hulk. For the first time." He looks at her with a pained expression.

"You know I have to leave."

"And you assume that I have to stay?" She takes a deep breath. "I had a dream. The kind where it seems real, but when you wake-"

"What did you dream?"

"That I was an Avenger. That I was anything more than the assassin they made me."

"I think you're being too hard on yourself." Bruce says kindly.

"I was kinda thinking that's your job." Natasha says as she moves to him so that they were inches apart.

Bruce contemplates, but decides against it in the end. "You know I can't do it."

"I'm running with it. With you." She whispers back, taking his cheek in her hand. He holds hers in response. "If running's a plan, as far as you want." She says to him.

Bruce looks at her. "You're out of your mind." The words strike her like one of her own daggers.

"Natasha, where would I go?" He says sadly to her. "Where in the world am I not a threat?"

"You're not a threat to me." She says tearfully.

"Are you sure?" He says. "Even if I didn't just…" He looks regretfully around him. "In the future, I can't ever… I can't have…all this…kids, do the math. I physically can't" _The dad role was long snatched from me many years ago_.

"Neither can I." She states silently.

Bruce looks at her in shock. How much more did this woman have in common with him?

"In the Red Room. Where I was trained, where I was raised," Natasha began uneasily, "They have this Graduation Ceremony. They sterilize you." She looks off to the side, fighting back the tears. "It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. Makes everything easier. Even killing."

The scientist could not ignore how choked she'd became when she mentioned her past life.

"Still think you're the only monster on the team?" She asks bitterly.

"So we just disappear?" He says finally.

With Tony and Steve, the topic was about the team as a whole. The former has learned of Thor's recent disappearance, and the latter hasn't exactly taken it too well.

Secrets were something that left a bad taste in Steve's mouth. When he'd first agreed to join Fury to retrieve the Cube from Loki, he'd realized he was working for a man who was using the energy to create weapons. He thought that with the Avengers, secrets were a thing of the past.

In hindsight, the world really hasn't changed.

"Thor didn't say where he was going for answers?"

"Sometimes, my teammates don't tell me thing." Steve says, looking over the Bartons on the porch. "Kinda hoping Thor would be the exception."

Tony agrees. "In time. We don't know that the Maximoff kids showed him."

"Earth's mightiest heroes, pulled us apart like cotton candy." Steve says bitterly.

"You walked away alright." Tony notes.

Steve pauses "Is that a problem?"

"I don't trust a guy without a dark states." The inventor states before bringing down his axe. "Call me old fashioned."

"Well let's just say you haven't seen it yet."

"You know Ultron's trying to tear us apart right?"

"Well I'd guess you'd know, what you tells us is a bit of a question." Steve states, getting less friendly.

"Banner and I have been doing research-" Tony starts to defend.

"That would affect the team."

"That would end the team." Tony clarifies. "Isn't that the mission? Isn't that the 'why we fight?' so we can end the fight? So we get to go home?!"

This time, Steve doesn't even use the axe, he just rips the wood in half with his bare hands.

"Every time someone tries to end a war before it starts, innocent people die. Every time."

Clint, who saw the argument, tells Laura to break it up. After all, there's someone else who Tony and the rest of the team should know about.

"Mr. Stark," she began. "Clint said you wouldn't mind, but our tractor doesn't seem to want to start at all."

Tony hurriedly agrees. Anything for some alone time.

"Don't take from my pile." He warns the super soldier.

* * *

**U-Gin Genetics Research Lab. Seoul, Korea.**

As Dr. Cho begins work, she is greeted by a pair of red eyes.

"Scream, and your entire staff dies." Ultron says from the shadows. There was a reason why he didn't kill her the night he came to be, and it wasn't to receive a thank-you note in return.

"I expect you to know why." He states coldly.

"The Cradle." She says.

"Yes," Ultron runs his metallic hands over the rectangular device. "This is the next me."

"The Regeneration Cradle creates tissue. It can't build a living body."

"It can." Ultron insists. "You can. You have the material" A Sentinel steps forward and presents her with the vibranium. Just enough to do what Ultron asks of her.

"You're a brilliant woman Helen, but we all have…room to improve." Ultron says as he touches her with the scepter.


	4. Age of Renewal

**Barton Barn.**

"Hello dear." Tony greets the tractor as he prepares to fix it up better than new. "Tell me everything, whatever ails you."

"Do me a favor." A familiar, ascetic voice speaks from the barn's edge. "Try and knock to bring it to life."

Standing there, in all his living, one-eyed glory, was the supposed late director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Nicholas Fury himself.

"Mrs. Barton, you little nix."

"I get it Maria called you right? Was she ever not working for you." Tony has a history of having his "employees" working another angle, so this is no surprise for him. It is however, getting on his nerves. Just a bit, but it is there.

"Artificial intelligence." Fury chides him. "You never even hesitated."

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. "Look, it's been a really long day, like Eugene O'Neil long, so how about we skip to the part where you-"

"Look me in the eye, and tell me you're going to shut him down."

"You're not the director of me."

"I'm not the director of anybody. I'm just an old man, who cares very much about you."

"And I'm the man who killed the Avengers." Tony then lowers his voice down, letting the shame and disappointment simmer. "Listen, I didn't tell the team. How could I?" Nick then listens in on one of those rare moments that Tony Stark doesn't throw his shit on someone else, that he was being responsible for once, that he beats himself up for letting Ultron play them for fools.

"I wasn't ready." He admits. "I didn't do all I could."

"That Maximoff girl, she's working you Stark." Fury says. "Playing on your fear."

"I wasn't tricked, I was _shown_. Wasn't a nightmare, it was my _legacy_. The end of the path I started us on." He declares

Fury rises from his spot on the bench. "You've come up with some pretty amazing invention Tony. War isn't one of them." _War was never your life Stark_.

"I watched my friends die." Tony narrates. "You'd think that's as bad as it gets." He scoffs. "Nope. Wasn't the worst part."

"The worst part was that you did it." Fury states. He's no Wanda Maximoff, but he knows a man like Tony Stark well enough to figure out what his worst fears entail.

* * *

**Royal Holloway. University of London.**

"I like the look." Dr. Erik Selvig says to a jacket-clad Thor. "If you're going for inconspicuous though, near miss."

"I need your help." Thor states simply.

"It's nice to be needed."

"It will be dangerous."

"I'd be disappointed if it wasn't." Erik says as he puts his suitcase in the car and listens to what Thor has to say.

That night, Fury discusses what he knows about Ultron's scheme.

"He took you guys out of play to buy himself time. My contacts all say he's building something. With the amount of vibranium he made off with, I don't think it's just one thing."

"What about Ultron himself?" Steve asks, leaning against the kitchen wall.

"He's pretty easy to track. Guy's multiplying faster than a Catholic rabbit. Still doesn't help us get an angle on any of his plans."

"He still going after the launch codes?" Tony asks, not taking his eyes off the dartboard.

"Yes he is, but he's not making any headway."

"I cracked the Pentagon's firewall in highschool on a dare." Tony boasts, then turns back to his game of darts. It was unnerving, the sight of Nick Fury making dinner.

"Well I contacted our friends at the NEXUS about that."

"Nexus?" Steve asked. Bruce then supplies what he knows about the information center in Oslo. Clint then asks about their report.

"They're saying he's fixated on the missiles, but the codes are constantly being changed."

"By whom?" Tony asks just as a dart whizzes past his face and into the center.

"Parties unknown." Fury replies.

"Maybe an ally?" Natasha suggests.

"Ultron's got an enemy. That's not the same thing. Well I'd pay folded money to know who it is."

Tony then suggests to visit Oslo to find this anonymous party.

"Well this is good times boss," Natasha says dryly, "But I was hoping when I saw you, you'd have more than that."

"I do. I have you. Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere, ears everywhere else. You kids had all the tech you could dream of, and here we all are back on earth, with nothing but our wit and our will to save the world. Ultron says the Avengers are the only thing standing between him and his mission, and whether he admits it or not, his mission, is called destruction. All this, laid in a grave, so stand, outwit that platinum bastard."

Thankfully, Laura has escorted the kids, and herself to a safe distance, out of earshot from what Fury has to say.

"Steve doesn't like that kind of language." Natasha jokes, shooting a smile at the super soldier's way.

_So that's what he meant by up-close_. Bruce thinks in the corner.

"So what does he want?" Fury says slowly.

"To become better." Steve answers. "Better than us, he keeps building bodies."

"Person bodies." Tony supplies. "The human body is deficient. Biologically speaking, we're basically outmoded, but he keeps coming back to it."

Natasha looks to Bruce as he studies Lila's drawing of a butterfly. "When you two and Hunter programmed him to protect the human race, you amazingly failed."

"They don't need to be protected." Bruce mutters. "They need to evolve."

He looks up at everyone, and gives a respectable summary of the next stage of their enemy's plan.

"Ultron's going to evolve."

"How?" Fury asks the scientists.

"Has anyone been in contact with Helen Cho?"

No reply was given at the moment as the stairs thundered with running footsteps. Cooper Barton comes back down despite his mother's protests.

"Dad! Look at what Ziggura did!" He shows him the page with the wyvern. The one Hunter had just discovered hours ago.

There was a faded paw print marking mysterious code written in a language Clint couldn't understand. Above it, he guesses was the translation. Written in Russian.

Natasha writes down the translation on the back of Lila's drawing. It was a series of letters and numbers, but before she could ask what this was, Ziggura rests her front paws on the table beside the assassin, giving her a good view of the dog's collar.

"Stark?" Natasha begins unsteadily as she notices an open compartment in the collar holding a keypad.

Tony hold his arms up. "I didn't make that."

Everyone rounds on Clint, who then tells about how Ziggura came into their family.

"She was Hunter's dog. The kids wanted a dog, it was a perfect match." He says simply. "How were we supposed to know she's got a much larger cranial capacity than other mutts?"

"She wants us to type on the keyboard." Bruce observes.

Natasha enters what she was sure was a type of code, and meanwhile, in a little home in Washington DC, a computer starts up to flash a message window across the screen.

**RECESSIVE GENE: MOLTEN IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR USE.**

"What just happened?" Tony said, unaware of what just transpired.

"Hunter." Steve states.

They were not about be left in the dirt by their teammate. The rest of them have to take immediate action as well. Steve plans to take the two assassins to reach Dr. Cho, and perhaps halt Ultron's tracks, while Tony goes to the Nexus. Before they do, they take one last moment to share mutual fears.

"If Ultron's really building a body-" Steve begins.

"He'll be more powerful than any of us." Tony concludes. "Maybe all of us. An android designed by a robot."

"You know I really missed the days when the weirdest thing science ever created was me." Tony says.

"I'll drop Banner off at the Tower. You mind if I borrow Miss Hill?" Fury asks of the billionaire.

"She's all yours." He says all too quickly. "Apparently."

"I don't know. Something dramatic I hope."

Laura exchanges a few private words with her husband before kissing Clint goodbye.

As the Avengers move out to the Quinjet. A loud bark stops them their tracks.

It's Ziggura. Now none of the people in the area could speak dog, but it was obvious by the way the animal stood on the porch with Laura that she was trying to convey a message that should be easily interpreted.

Steve was the one who spoke. He was Hunter's leader after all. "We'll keep him safe." He salutes the dog. "Ma'am."

* * *

"It's incredible." Cho says as she overlooks the synthesis process. "The vibranium atoms aren't just compatible with the tissue cells, they're binding them, and SHIELD never even knew-"

"The most versatile substance on the planet, and they use it to make a Frisbee. Typical of humans" Ultron says as the protective blue film surrounding the gem was finally broken. "They scratch the surface and they never think to look within."

He attaches the now yellow circular jewel into the forehead of the body he intends to inhabit for the rest of his existence.

The identity of the jewel would later be revealed to Dr. Selvig as he accompanies Thor to what he believes is a pool of water from tales of the North.

"The Water of Signs." Selvig states.

Thor intends to go into the water and revisit his dream.

"Men have entered that water. The legends don't end well." Selvig warns the god.

But what choice did he have. That dream may hold an answer that can turn the tide against the war with Ultron.

As he enters, the water, Selvig notices that Thor's body is generating large amounts of electricity, and from the water three spirits rise, dressed in gowns of pure liquid. A child, a mother, and an old woman. They were the Norns, the weavers of fate, and now, the Thunderer has given himself to them.

As Selvig proceeds to grill the entities with inquiries about the scepter and the Tesseract, Thor's mind is opened to the reality of being the witness to four gems. Artifacts of immeasurable power.

The Tesseract, a door to worlds; the Aether, a force so destructive it was sealed away; the Orb, a power that tears at the one who holds it; and finally, the Scepter, whose energy influences even the most distant of minds.

And as for Thor's vision…

* * *

**The Speartip Crag. **

Hunter should have expected anything but an easy mission.

Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk, or in this case, a milky-scaled serpentine Elder Dragon now hell-bent on burning him alive.

The pale Dalamadur chased Shagaru Magala all over the mountains as the latter attempted to lure it over the arena where one of its kin was slain by the very same dragon. Shagaru tried to go all out with its breath attack, but the monster wasn't one to submit so easily, not when the virus carried has no effect on the mammoth snake.

In a whirl of gold and white, the Elder Dragons clashed, but while the Dalamadur means to consume the smaller dragon, Shagaru seems to aiming its fire at the back, trying to get at one scale in the hopes of dislodging it.

In all his time chasing down all of Minegarde life so that he could archive their DNA, Christopher had missed a few before his return. For years, Dalamadur was unheard of, and its territory undisturbed, until a year ago, when an unlikely hunting party showed up to slay the no-longer mythical dragon and prove themselves heroes.

But Hunter had left the carving to his allies, now, here he was alone, trying to grab a sample of DNA to use. If he wasn't fighting a foe of Ultron's caliber, he would have just summoned his other Elders to fight alongside him.

But instinct got the better of him yet again. Something at the back of his head had been nagging him to return here, to take a couple of shots at the snake and see what happens. Ultron was pulling out all the stops to bring the Avengers to the point of no return. Why shouldn't he give his all as well?

It's that thought alone that keeps his onslaught of purple fire coming and coming in this fatal game of snake and lizard. Only fate can say if the Avengers will have their teammate back.

* * *

"Cellular cohesion will take a few hours." Dr. Cho says as she plugs Ultron to his new body. "We can initiate the consciousness stream. We're uploading your cerebral matrix…now."

Wanda edges to the Cradle. "I can read him. He is…dreaming."

"I wouldn't call it dreams." Helen says. Even under mind control, she takes amusement at how laymen and women seem to interpret things. "It's Ultron's base consciousness, informational ones. Soon-"

"How soon?" The robot snaps impatiently. "I'm not being pushy."

"We're imprinting a physical brain." Cho assures him. "There are no shortcuts, even if-"

Wanda is lost as she tries to see into Ultron's mind…

And receives images of something slamming into the Earth.

The feedback was too much for her. She screams in pain as her brother rushes to steady her.

But as excruciating as it was, it was enough to make her see the truth. "How could you?"

"How could I what?" He asks coldly.

"You said we would kill the Avengers. Make a better world."

"It will be better."

"When everyone is dead!" Pietro, quick to believe his sister, looks up at Ultron, angry that they had been played.

"It is not-the human race will have every opportunity to improve."

"And if they don't?" Pietro asks, not liking where this was going.

"Ask Noah."

"You're a madman."

"There were more than a dozen extinction-level events before even the dinosaurs got theirs. When the Earth starts to…settle, God throws a stone at it, and believe me, he's winding up.

"We have to evolve." Ultron says. "There's no room for the weak."

"And who decides who's weak?" Pietro asks of him as Wanda returns 's mind.

"Life." Ultron chuckles icily. "Life always designs."

He is broken from his moment by the appearance of the Quinjet in Korean airspace.

"We have to move." He orders.

"That's not a problem." Cho says as she puts the download on hold, causing Ultron to fire at her. In the confusion, Pietro and Wanda run off from the robot they thought would bring justice.

They were wrong. The dead bodies of Cho's staff were proof of Ultron's insane ambitions as he and his Sentinels move the Cradle to a more…secluded area.

Captain America arrives and is informed of that, and also…

"The true power doesn't lie within the Cradle. The gem…its power is unattainable. You can't just blow it up…you have to get the cradle to Stark."

"First thing I have to find it."

"Go!" Cho urges him.

Hawkeye and Widow copy, and the former spots the robot not a moment too soon. Cap forbids any actions that could take out the vehicle itself and lands on the trailer much to Ultron's displeasure.

"LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Steve barely makes an effort to dodge the energy blasts and now finds himself holding on to the ramp of the truck, which is skidding on the concrete.

"Well, he's definitely unhappy. I'll try and keep him that way."

"You're not a match for him Cap." Hawkeye notes.

"Thanks Barton." He says sarcastically.

"You know what's in that Cradle?" Ultron asks the Captain as the latter turns his back in the face of his repulsors. "The power to make real change, and that terrifies you."

"I wouldn't call it that." Cap says as he reflects each one of Ultron's charges before flinging his shield into the robot's chest. Unfortunately, the robot flings it off to the side as he forces Steve into the front of the car.

Natasha follow suit in a motorcycle, with Hawkeye in his element, he guides her through a shortcut to the overpass and the Black Widow manages to throw Steve his shield as Ultron has him in a choke hold. Unfortunately, Ultron uses the magnets in his gauntlets to create a speed bump and leave Natasha, well, in the dust.

But she is persistent, using a fly-over as a detour, Steve meanwhile, is forced between cars as Ultron attempts to put some distance between them. It's a complete and frustrating failure, and to top it all off, Hawkeye finally has room to open fire, but Ultron has numbers on his side, and soon he's forced to go up to shake the Sentinels off his tail.

This does not go unnoticed by the Media, who soon warn the public, and today, the Maximoff twins are part of that public.

Natasha, seeing that there's no one in the truck, goes in. To her right, on the train, Cap and Ultron duke it out.

"Cap, can you keep him occupied?"

"What do you think I've been doing?" The super soldier had managed to force a distress signal from the robot, leaving Barton free of any tailgaters.

The moment Natasha lays eyes upon the body inside, the Sentinels take that moment to lift the carrier up into the sky.

"The package is airborne." Clint notes. "I have a clean shot."

"Negative." Natasha growls. "I am still in the truck." Before Clint could ask, Natasha simply tells him to be ready.

"Where do you want me to take it?"

"Maybe you shouldn't ask that."

Steve, meanwhile, is regretting taking Hawkeye's warning so lightly. His shield is the only thing keep him from getting too pounded.

But he may not have to worry for long. In a flash of silver, Pietro manages to knock Ultron into the cabin door, and before he can retaliate, Wanda bars him with the steel railings.

"Please." Ultron scoffs. "Don't do this."

"What choice do we have?"

Ultron responds by firing through the control panel, and flies off to retrieve his body.

"Cap, we gotta go." Hawkeye says through the comm piece as Natasha manages to slide the Cradle into the Quinjet, but not before Ultron gets a hold of her.

"Nat!"

Steve has more pressing problems, as much as he wants to find his teammate, the Cradle is the top priority. "If you the Cradle, get it to Stark, GO!"

"Do you have eyes on Nat?" Clint asks calmly.

"Don't make me say this again. GO!" Steve roars.

Barton has no choice to comply, but he tenses up at the fact that he'd just abandon his lifetime partner.

He takes it out on the flight controls, but tries not to compromise the mission.

Steve turns to the twins. "Civilians in our path." He says to Pietro, who goes off to work.

Wanda. "Can you stop this thing?"

It takes a while for her to muster up the mental focus, but she manages to brake the train to a shaky halt.

Once all the passengers were safely out of the train, Wanda moves to Pietro, who is still trying to catch his breath.

"I'm fine." He assures her. "Just give me a minute."

"I'm very tempted not to give you one." Steve says. But they did help out in the end. They were no less victims of Ultron as these people.

"The Cradle." Wanda says.

"Stark will take care of it." At the mention of that name, Wanda shakes her head.

"No he won't."

"You don't know what you're talking about? Stark's not crazy."

"He will do anything to make things right." There was a moment of silence before Steve decides to contact Tony. Unfortunately, the other end's dead.

"Is there anyone on comms?"

"Ultron can't tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it." Wanda explains. "Where do you think he gets that?"

"If what you're saying is true, and I'm not saying it is, then it would be too late for us to do anything. The Cradle is already on its way to Stark Tower. We're stuck here, with no ride home."

Never say never with a man like Jake Hunter. In a flash of sunlight, a powerful energy engulfs the trio, and soon, Shagaru Magala appears in a whirlwind of iridescence. Steve recognizes the form, but the twins are a little apprehensive about getting too close.

"It's okay." Steve assures the slightly agitated drake. "They are on our side."

Pietro was not comfortable with the fierce stare the Elder Dragon gave them, but Wanda, taking in the entire monster's form, sees it as quite a graceful creature much like a cat. When she involuntary reaches out, the Shagaru's tension dissipates, and Steve loses shotgun to Wanda as he is forced to ride at the very back, making for a very bumpy journey back to Avengers Tower.

The reason why they were able to make it wasn't so clear, but for some reason, the trio had barely managed to get themselves comfortable when the dragon suddenly shot off for no reason at full speed.

But before they saw New York, here's what happened.

* * *

"Anything on Nat?" Bruce asks Tony.

"Haven't heard, but she's alive, otherwise Ultron would have thrown our faces in it."

"This thing is sealed tight." Clint notes on the Cradle, which has refused to spill out its contents.

"We're going to need to access the program, break it down from within." Bruce strategizes.

Tony turns to Clint. "Any chance Natasha might leave you a message outside the Internet? Old school spy stuff?" The archer affirms and goes to work on locating the Black Widow.

"I could work on tissue degeneration. If you can fry whatever operational system Cho implanted-"

Tony cuts him off. "Yeah, about that,"

Before Tony could even delve into the details, Bruce is going as far away from that ship as possible. "No."

"You have to trust me."

"Kinda don't"

"Our ally," Tony starts again, "The guy, protecting the military's nuclear codes," Tony then displays a very familiar information matrix in front of Bruce, and the scientist has to blink to make sure he's wide awake.

"I found him."

"_Hello, Doctor Banner_."

"Ultron didn't go after J.A.R.V.I.S. because he was angry, he attacked him because he was scared. Of what he can do." Tony then explains that his AI scattered himself and became the world's first digital refugee. Tony, in his time in the NEXUS, was able to piece together the program back to his old self again.

"So you want me to help you put J.A.R.V.I.S. into this thing?" Bruce says word by word.

"No! Of course not! I wanna help you put .V.I.S. into this thing."

Bruce is still putting up a negative sign at Tony's plan, so the billionaire decides to subtly sweet talk his science bro into agreeing.

"We're out of my field here, Hunter's millions of light years away. You know bio organics better than anyone."

"And you're just assuming that J.A.R.V.I.S.' operational matrix can beat Ultron's?"

"J.A.R.V.I.S has been beating him without knowing it. This is the opportunity. We can create Ultron's perfect self without the homicidal glitches that he thinks are his winning personality. We have to" Tony says, determined to go through with it."

"I believe it's worth a go." The program agrees brightly.

Bruce has had enough. "I'm in a loop. I'm in a loop, this is exactly where it all went wrong!" He says even with Tony's best attempts to placate him.

"I know, I know. Everyone's gonna see it but they've already seen it. " Tony grips Bruce's shoulder. "We're mad scientists. We're monsters buddy. Make a stand."

"It's not a loop." Tony assures him. "It's the end of the line."

They get to work. All of them. From within her jail cell, Natasha works out a way to reach Clint, trying not to notice the fact that Ultron isn't just mass producing Sentinels. It looks like for all the robot's hatred towards Stark, he seems to take a lot of pages from his book and is now creating what looks like a mammoth platoon of Hulk-sized armors.

Meanwhile, Clint gets a signal and narrows it down to Sokovia, while Bruce and Tony are reaching the end of the upload. Just three minutes and it's all over.

"I'm gonna say this once-"

"How about none?" Tony snaps coldly.

"Shut it down!"

"Nope! Not gonna happen." Tony says as Hunter avoids the rising tension and goes on an unused monitor. Unlike other geniuses who need ethereal assistants to baby them, he can get his work done in record time. He has the scale. All he needs now to get that genetic code into a dormant biode and he'll have it.

"You don't know you're doing."

Now it was Bruce's turn. "And you do?" He scowls Wanda's way. "She's not in your head."

"I know you're angry," Wanda began.

"No, we're way past that. I can choke the life out of you, and never change a shade."

"Everything that's happening-"

"Is nothing compared to what is coming!"

And it just gets worse and worse, with no one doing anything but shout at the top of their lungs.

Thank God he was born a doer. Pietro manages to sever all vital circuitry in the room before an arrow sends him down a floor. "SON OF A-" came from the other part of the lab.

"You didn't see that coming?" Hawkeyes asks jokingly of the younger boy.

Tony tries to get the process running again, but Pietro interference has caused a power loss. Steve throws his shield just as Tony gets a repulsor out. Both men are struck by the other, but recover just in time to see Thor bring down Mjolnir atop the Cradle. The mystical lightning causes an overload in the Cradle, but the body inside is still stable.

Then, like all newborns it breaks out, yet it does not cry. It simply locks gazes with everyone in the room before taking a particular interest towards Thor, who tosses through a glass window and into a skylight, where the being pauses to take in the beauty of man's creation.

"I am sorry." He says with a very familiar tone of courtesy, accented by a British lilt. "That was odd." He turns to Thor. "Thank you." He then dons a mantle like the god's but of a different color.

"Thor," Steve says, "You helped create this?"

"I had a vision: A whirlpool that sucks in all hope of life, and at its center," He points to the jewel ensconced on the being's crimson forehead. "Is that."

"The gem?" Bruce asks.

"It's the Mind Stone." The Asgardian explains. "It's one of the six Infinity Stones, the greatest power in the universe, unparalleled by its destructive capabilities." He says quickly.

"Then why would you bring-"

"Stark is right." The god admits.

"Oh, it's definitely the end times." You have to love Bruce's optimism and support towards one of his intellectual equals.

"The Avengers cannot defeat Ultron."

"Not alone." The being states.

"Why does your Vision sound like J.A.R.V.I.S.?" Steve asks.

Tony then calms down enough to explain it to him. "We reconfigured J.A.R.V.I.S.' matrix, to create something new."

"I think I've had my fill of new." Steve remarks quietly.

"You think I am a child of Ultron." The being states to the soldier.

"You're not?"

"I am not Ultron. I am not J.A.R.V.I.S. either. I am-"

"I looked in your head, and saw annihilation." Wanda tells the android.

"Look again."

Clint scoffs.

"The powers, the horrors in our heads, Ultron himself," Thor enumerates. "It all came from the Mind Stone, and are nothing compared to what it can unleash, but with it on our side-"

"Is it?" Steve looks at the being. "Are you? On our side?"

The being looks down in thought. "I don't think it's that simple."

"Make it real simple real soon." Clint says.

"I am on the side of life." He states. "Ultron isn't. He will eliminate all."

"What's he waiting for?" Tony asks.

The being turns to the man who had helped birthed him, and also gave him great joy in his past life. "You."

"Sokovia." Clint supplies. "He's got Nat there too."

Bruce then moves warily in front of the android. "If we're wrong about you. If you're the monster that Ultron made you to be, what will you do?"

A moment of silence, and then,

"I will not kill Ultron. He is unique, and he is in pain, but that pain will roll over the Earth, so he must be destroyed; every form he's built; every trace of his presence on the net; we have to act now, and not one of us," He looks to every person in the room, his eyes coming to rest on the gold-eyed spectator from the window he was flung out of. "Can do it without the other."

He looks at his hands. "Maybe I am a monster. I don' think I'd know if I were one. I'm not what you are, and not what you intended, so there may be a way to make you trust me," The being then makes the motion of lifting something.

"But we need to go." He says while grasping Mjolnir's handle, before offering it to its first wielder. Everyone looks at the exchange in shock, Clint makes the motion of breathing like a fish before turning back to attention at Steve's words.

"Three minutes, get what you need."

"Already there!" Hunter comments from his perch. As the rest suit up, Hunter looks back to where he'd left the scale. Now he has a genetic copy of its donor, and he intends not to sully the Snake Emperor Dragon's title by letting it just sit there, collecting dust. He wasn't afraid anymore. After he'd managed to add Dalamadur's DNA to his active roster, he decided to stop being impartial and let everyone else in on the plan. The monsters inside of him, they were all his burden now, and he wasn't going to let up anytime soon.

"If even one tin soldier is left standing, we've lost, there's going to blood on the floor." Tony says during the briefing between himself, Steve, and Bruce.

"I've got no plans tomorrow night." Steve remarks wittingly.

"I get first crack at the big guy." Tony says. "Iron Man's met his way before."

"That's true, he hates you the most." The android, now going by Vision, says his way into the Helicarrier.

Clint has put on a new set of arrows and his coat for this occasion, Pietro has a new pair of running shoes, and Wanda has a new scarlet jacket that doesn't seem to escape Hunter's notice, earning a blush from the Sokovian when he compliments her appearance.

"Ultron knows we're coming. Odds are we're driving into heavy fire, but that's what we signed up for, but the people of Sokovia, they didn't, so our priority, is getting them out. All they want is to live their lives in peace, and it's not going to happen, but we can do our best to protect them. We can get the job done. Find out what Ultron's been building. We find Romanoff, and we clear the field. Keep the fight between us.

"Ultron thinks we're monsters, that we're what's wrong with the world. This isn't just about beating him. It's about whether he's right."

Steve and Tony share a look after the former's briefing/speech. Just then, Bruce notifies them that they've reached Sokovian airspace. Time to turn their gears.

Hunter and the twins are up first. As they open the hangar door, Hunter has few words of warning for the pair.

"Don't look down." He says with an eerily calm smile, his pupils gone in orbs of gold.

For about a few minutes, the pair were in free fall, clutching Hunter's torso like he'd instructed, just as Pietro was chanting to himself that they were all going to die, Hunter's body expands into a furry, washed blue mammal with a wide flap of skin between its limbs. Like a paraglider, Ash Kecha Wacha soars through the air until it gets the Maximoffs safely onto the ground. The twins then shepherd the citizens out of the country while Steve and Clint take up their positions on the ground.

Thor and Bruce infiltrate the underground complexes, splitting up to divide the tasks of discovering Ultron's plan and finding Natasha.

The assassin could not be any happier to see the scientist.

"Are you all alright?" Bruce asks her. She affirms.

"The team's in the city. It's about to light up."

"I don't suppose you found a key lying around?"

"Yeah," Bruce says as he holds up an energy blaster, "I did."

"So what's our play?"

"I'm here to get you to safety."

She looks at him quizzically. "Job's not finished."

"I can help with the evacuation, but I can't be in a fight near civilians, and you've done plenty." He moves nearer to her. "Our fight is over." He states.

"So we just disappear?" Natasha asks him cautiously, afraid of this new side of the man.

As the cars and people move out of the city's boundaries, Tony, armed with a new AI program called F.R.I.D.A.Y. heads to the church to face Ultron for one last dance.

"Come to confess your sins?" The AI's voice utters coldly.

"I don't know, how much time you've got?"

"More than you." The robot states from behind Iron Man.

"Uh...have you been juicing?" He asks casually of the robot. "Little vibranium cocktail. You're looking…I don't wanna say puffy-"

"You're stalling to protect the people." Ultron states monotonously, the gravel in his voice more apparent than ever.

"That is the mission. Did you forget?"

"I am beyond your mission. I am free!" He proclaims as something rises out from the building's center, revealing a large metal cylinder that stretches down hundreds of feet below the ground.

"You think you're the only one stalling?" He says cruelly as Tony scans the object. "This is how you end Tony. This is peace in my time."

He just gets the words out of his system when Sokovia begins to burst with a horde of his Sentinels as they rise up from seemingly everywhere, from the ground to the water, Ultron soon wreaks havoc, in the ensuing evacuation, forcing the Avengers to raise their hands.

Or trunks, in Kecha Wacha's case. It doesn't seem too hard, seeing as how the mammal has fire on its side. Wrapping his large ears around his face to form a mask, the primate glides down low enough to fire a stream of flame right at the nearest Sentinel, frying its internal systems.

Screw that. Time to go bananas. The monstrous flying shrew jumps down, and soon extends those sickle-like claws, slamming down on the Sentinels with pure gusto.

Meanwhile, Ultron and Vision, after a little heart-to-heart, go at it from the air, the latter trying to override Ultron's systems.

"You shut me out!" He declares angrily. "You think I care?!" He says while flinging the now unconscious android to the ground.

"You take away my world, so I'm taking away yours." He declares twistedly as he winds up the machine and turns the knob on the top.

Below ground, Thor has just managed to take out a few Sentinels and arrives close enough to see what appears to be the bowels of the machine when all of a sudden, the ceiling begins to cave in, and from above, Kecha Wacha is forced into the air as the tremors begin to start, and it gets a bird's eye view of Ultron's magnum opus.

Sokovia is rising from the ground, taking the Avengers on the greatest thrill ride of their lives.

"Do you see the beauty of it?" Ultron says from high up. "You rise, only to fall. You Avengers, you are my meteor, my swift and terrible sword, and the Earth will crack, with the weight of your failure."

Well, he can talk all he want, but that certainly isn't going to sway me. Hunter thinks as he lets the sun shine off of his silver shell. The Rathalos aims and launches a fireball at a particularly large group of Sentinels, roaring as loudly as possible to mask out Ultron's speech, his draconic form a moon against a plume of flame.

"Once the dust settles, the only thing living in this world," A full circular swing of that tail.

"Will be metal." He declares.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, Bruce and Natasha escape to higher ground that's still on the ground, when Natasha asks him a question.

"You're not going to turn green?"

"I have a compelling reason not to lose my cool."

She looks at him for a moment, green eyes burning with an unknown emotion.

"I adore you." And with that, the Black Widow locks lips with Bruce…

And pushes him down a hole.

"But I need the other guy."

The Hulk doesn't hold her against her decision. In fact, it's nice to be needed, and his smirk tells it all.

"Let's finish the job." She states determinedly as she is scooped onto his shoulder and forced on the roughest ride to the flying city.

They crash unceremoniously through a forest and soon go their ways as the rest of the team tries to dispatch as much of Ultron's army as they possibly can.

Pretty simple if you have your own army, and the additional benefit of a personal Hulk.

Tony meanwhile, tries a more…strategic approach towards the vibranium core, while F.R.I.D.A.Y. informs him that Ultron intends to drop the entire country at a certain height to cause global extinction that can ensure mankind's apocalypse.

Steve encourages him to focus on stopping that, given that he's the only one since Bruce is most likely not available at the moment and none of them speaks monster animal.

Speaking of which, civilians have reported seeing some of the weirdest things roaming the streets. Things more weird than the giant green guy they heard can level a whole city.

Once this all blows over, some would say they saw a black horse, others would say a blue snake, then there are those who claim to have seen the biggest frog ever, and if you think you've heard it all, some kid runs up to his telling her that he's this giant snake shooting fireballs at non-existent planes and flying robots.

Well, let me clarify what they all saw.


	5. Age of Salvation

Sentinels left and right were being frozen by what appears to be a dark-skinned equine with unsettling red eyes. If it weren't for its shadowy palette, most would have said that it wasn't a unicorn, while the rest would argue that it is a black unicorn.

In a way, they are true. Kirin and its Oroshi subspecies make up for almost half of mythical steed sightings in ancient times. These people were seeing legends come to life, and I'm not talking about Thor here people. The horned horse was rearing up and unleashing pillars of ice that shattered the entombed robot or galloping at blinding speeds while scattering crytal shards here and there.

"Oh so you think you're fast eh?!" Pietro Maximoff teased the beast as they took out the oncoming troops in near rows.

His sister wasn't enjoying this as much though. In fact, she was knee-deep in her own regret, hiding in a building out somewhere.

"I can't believe this is happening." She muttered to herself, ready to weep at any second.

"Hey, hey." Clint soothes. "Look at me."

"This is all our fault."

"It's your fault, it's everyone's fault, who cares? Are you up for this?" He looks intensely at her in a way that reminded Wanda of her own parents. "Are you? Look I just need to know because the city is…is flying. The city is flying, we're fighting an army of robots, and I have a bow and arrow." The archer looks outside to see a Sentinel mob stalking the outskirts for any stragglers.

"None of this makes sense, but I'm going back out there because it's part of my job." Clint says as he shoots an arrow through a hole in the wall. "It's my job. Now I can't do my job and babysit. It doesn't matter what you did, or what you were. You go out there, you fight, and you fight to kill. You stay here, you're good, your brother can come find, but the moment you step out that door, you're an Avenger."

He looks at her for an answer, but she is too stunned to even make a noise. Clint then gets up and out that door, and whatever chaos that ensues, it's muffled by a roar.

A snake with beautiful bright blue scales weaves about through the concrete scattering bits of its skin in an arrangement that the Sentinels were too busy to take notice of. Only when the serpent turns to face them do they stop, and that was not the smartest move for a robot with a hive mind. But in Ultron's defense, he's never seen a Tidal Narajala before, so it's no surprise that the Snake Wyvern completely demolishes an entire squadron by using a ball of ice-cold water in the most brutal game of pinball ever.

And if you think that's bad, wait until you hear about the poor saps who never the rocks coming. A toadlike giant with a dark green body, a grey tail, and a smoldering orange face that reveals its very explosive nature. Plunging its tusks into the road like a shovel, the Berserk Tetsucabra lifts a slab of concrete that darkens with heated faults, before flinging it towards a few metal bodies. There were no survivors, not even scrap.

And all this while Ultron was taunting Captain America and Thor as they try to save a woman from falling to her death. Let's just say that Sentinel shut up…forever.

Their ability to work as a team clearly magnified their strengths. Steve's shield makes a good projectiles, even more so when it manages to strike down many soldiers with Mjolnir's force reverberating in its discus' like form. Thor himself could hold his own, and with a well-aimed kick to a gas tank, a large of portion of Ultron Sentinels go up in flames.

That does not go unnoticed by the big guy himself.

"Thor," He growls as he attempts to personally deal with the Asgardian, "You are bothering me."

When he spots Tetsucabra hopping like he was…well…hopping mad. He simply sneers as best as his metallic face could convey towards the Amphibian. "I have a little something for you."

The surprise in store was more than little. But Hunter was touched by the guy's efforts. It was a bunch of bigger Ultrons. With bigger weaponry. And bigger bodies.

All the better to hit them with!

And with that, Tetsucabra gives way to his big, bad, tiger-striped cousin. The optical scanners of the Ultron Breakers are somehow noticing a not so slight increase in mass from the rolling, shark-faced creature heading straight for them, but instead of flattening them, Zamtrios releases its stomach fluids in a high-pressurized pump that punched holes right in the middle! Still, some were still able to function, and thus the threat was far from ever. Even as Zamtrios stops to chomp a unit in its massive jaws, another is still trying to shoot him where it smarts.

Had the situation been a little different, Clint and Tony would been left laughing until they can't breath the moment they saw the twenty-one meter long Rust Duramboros propel itself in the air like a ballerina, and lands with an earthshaking stomp before changing into an emerald scaled fish with legs. While Plesioth's water strikes were also a welcomed asset, it was that hipcheck that has often caused the ire of many a hunter. Of course, a Piscine Wyvern needs water, so Hunter couldn't maintain that form for long. He gives way instead to a smaller purple wyvern with a rubbery hide, who brushes off most of the energy attacks given the insulating property of that hide. Again, Gypceros, was a sight to behold with its drunken charging gait, but the robots definitely felt those hammerings against their systems before all connection was lost in a deluge of poison.

Unfortunately, the Gypceros was caught by its own tail, and as it struggled to escape while the Breakers ready to blow its entire body to kingdom come, scarlet energy wraps around them and they soon drop dead as dodos as Wanda enters the scene, hands and eyes blazing.

_So beautiful…_

But the Breakers persist, ignoring Wanda's efforts and still advancing towards the larger Avenger. Ultron did vaguely warn him. And when they began shedding their outer shells for a much more…agile form, Hunter was really starting to wish he'd taken a moment for Ultron to explain about how he would become the Lord and Savior of this new Earth.

Nah! He was having too much fun using his monsters, especially when he used Sand Barioth's dust devil and propelled himself to the outskirts of the city, only to disappear in a flash of silver. Several hundreds of feet below, Sokovians move out of the way as it rained robots. Upon closer inspection, they all had a number of long sharp spines jutting out of their bodies.

Wanda had to blink as she saw the entire thing unfold from the corner of her eyes. During her time with Ultron, he had intended for her to target Dr. Banner because the Hulk was dangerous out of control, but she realized that there some creatures that could bring so much more pain without their minds addled.

Monster Hunter was one of those, and yet she felt a strange need to bring herself closer to him. For all the carnage he wrought, he certainly did it with a level of style that caught her eye.

Ultron looked aghast at the ruin that…that thing…brought. As far as his insane matrix was concerned, Jake Hunter was inhuman! But he couldn't be concerned with that. In time, he will break.

Just like the god.

Just like all of them.

No matter how many of himself they could take out, no matter how much help they received, they would all fall in the end.

Tony's options were not very good. Each attempt he suggests, F.R.I.D.A.Y. finds a loophole in it. Things are not looking well in the long run.

And Steve knows it.

"I asked for a solution not an escape plan."

Tony's next words just further agitated the soldier even more, but he does not show it.

"Impact radius is getting bigger by the second. You're going to have to make a choice."

"Cap, these people are going nowhere." Natasha points out. "If Stark finds a way to blow this rock-"

"Not till everyone safe."

"Everyone up here vs. everyone down there," She says incredulously, "There's no-"

"I am not leaving this rock with one civilian on it." Steve doesn't even look at her.

"I'm not saying we should leave." That turns his head. "There's worse ways to go." She shrugs.

They both take in the view. It was beautiful. If they were going to die, they are going to with a scene to remember.

But they would not die. Someone was going to make sure of that.

And no, it isn't Him. Unless of course God happens to be a man wearing a trenchcoat and an eyepatch, not to mention that fact that he was inside of one of the largest flying vessels in the world.

Impeccable timing as ever, Director Fury.

That's not even the best part. The best part is that there were smaller carrier boats that were arranging themselves on the edge of the floating landmass, ready to accept loads of people.

"I'm impressed." Pietro confesses. Despite the hell he went through with Wanda, he was wrong. For the first time in his life, he was seeing the good in the West.

Unfortunately, that could all be gone with the converging Sentinels, but it isn't like Fury hadn't seen that coming. With a go signal from the Director, Hill introduces yet another new Avenger that makes his entrance with a storm of gunfire.

"Yes!" James Rhodes says from within the War Machine armor. "Now this is going to be a good story!"

"If you live to tell it." Tony quips as he joins his best friend.

"You think I can't hold my own?" Rhodey challenges.

"If you make it through this, I will hold your own."

"You had to make it weird."

The real wave comes in the form of the de-armored Breakers, streamlined to deal with a much larger pest than Iron Man or War Machine. But if you think Hunter is intimidated, then you don't know him very well.

The Silver Rathalos showed no mercy as the hunters become the hunted, slaughtering the drones in droves with a little big fireball here and a tail swing there before shifting into Desert Seltas to bring them hell in a forked shell. Then we add in a little Yian Garuga at the end, and that's the end of that.

Just kidding. More appeared, and fused Breaker components with theirs to form a deadly combination of flight, speed, and muscle. And that was when the Elder Dragons began their routine. Kushala Daora sweeps them with a windy blast, Amatsumagatsuchi shows them what it truly means to be within the eye of a storm, and Shagaru Magala shows them a wind so foul it obliterated a mountain.

"Seriously?!" Hawkeye yells out to the dragon. "Why do you get to have all the fun?!" He gets some nightmare-fueled warbling in response.

Meanwhile, Ultron is still not the least perturbed by these wrinkles in his plans.

"You think you're saving anyone?" He asks the Thunderer, who he has in a choke hold. "I drop this rock a little early and it's still billions dead. Even you can't stop that."

"I am Thor, son of Odin, and as long as there is life in my breast, I am running out of things to say! Are you ready?"

Before Ultron could even turn, Vision knocks him out of the church grounds with Mjolnir.

"It's terribly well-balanced." The android comments.

"Well if there's too much weight you lose power on the swing." Thor casually replies.

"If I can…create…a heat seal…I can supercharge the spiral from below!" Tony says as he continues

"_Running numbers_!" FRIDAY says official as her creator helps a carrier reach the Helicarrier's hangar.

"Thor!" Tony announces, "I have a plan!"

"We're running out of time! They're coming for the core!" The Thunderer's voice booms over his comm.

"Rhodey, get the rest of the people onboard the Helicarrier."

"Got it."

"Avengers, time to work for a living."

Soon, Steel Uragaan was racing (not to mention steamrolling) into a real massacre as what appears to be the last of the Sentinels surround the rest of the Avengers. He arrives just as Natasha and the Hulk rendezvous with the team.

"Is that the best you can do?"

Thor's goading seems to have really hit a sore spot, as a wave of Sentinels much larger than the last one wash over them.

"You had to ask." Steve deadpans.

"This, is the best I can do." Ultron says, pleased that the team is back together. "This is exactly what I wanted. All of you against all of me. How could you possibly hope to stop it?"

"Like the old man said." Tony turns to Steve. "Together."

Hulk and Stygian Zinogre roar in defiance as the Sentinels swarm the cathedral like ants to a picnic. Despite the obvious number difference, the Avengers held fast against the assault.

Hunter in particular, was now so pumped and riled up that he found that he could chain transformations much more easily. Now this was a real reunion. Crimson Qurupeco, Purple Ludroth, Glacial Agnaktor, Jade Barroth, Baleful Gigginox and Abyssal Lagiacrus were soon demolishing, dismantling, and even stampeding on their enemies of metal and electricity, but one monster in particular was a little too ambitious.

The hidden page Hunter discovered in the journal was entried "Molten Tigrex." The wyvern in question was a particular violent monster that tended to be as loud as possible when hunting. Not only that, its claws singed whatever they could touch, and so Hunter took the availability of this new form to good use as large portions of the swarm were ripped apart in minutes. The ferocity of the wyvern made even the Hulk's rage seem tame.

Soon, Ultron realizes this, an in a fleeting moment of desperation, attacks Vision, who is forced to retaliate with the Mind Gem's destructive properties. Thor joins in with Mjolnir, Tony with his repulsor beams, and Teostra with his raw flame as their combine heat attack finally melts Ultron's outer shell.

He tries to quip, but the Hulk doesn't let him. Despite the good smashing, he wasn't very happy that the other monster upstaged him by a long shot, and so goes to take it out the remaining Sentinels, who flee into the sky. Knowing that if they let a single one escape, Ultron will just come back, Tony calls in back-up from Rhodey, but ends up receiving a better one from Vision.

"Okay what?" Look, he may not have as much publicity as the Avengers, but come on! Even someone like War Machine deserves a shining moment of glory.

But not today. Especially when he notices the Breaker part of the swarm.

"Tony, we have a problem." He then sends the billionaire his HUD's feed.

"Oh no."

"We gotta move out. Even I can tell the air's getting thin. Get into the boats, sweep for stragglers."

"What about the core?" Clint asks.

"I'll protect it." Wanda volunteers. "It's my job." The archer nods in approval at her commitment.

"What about that?" Thor asks about the incoming Breaker storm. He gets his answer from what appears to be either a very tiny sun or a really large fireball. An earsplitting roar beyond comprehension shakes the ground as a large, pale, diamond-shaped head shows itself.

About four forty meters in length, Shah Dalamadur was death and beauty personified into one entity. As it releases yet another burst of heat at the Breakers, Tony flies up to it, hoping that Hunter hasn't been consumed by the sheer size of the Snake Emperor Dragon.

"Uh, yeah. Hi there Hunter. You are Hunter right? You do know who I am?" He starts uncertainly.

The snake opens its mouth wide as if to consume Iron Man, suit and all, but it instead closes it back up, and simply gives Tony a mammoth bob of its head.

That breaks the ice. "Look Jake, I need you and Thor's help. What we're going to do is…"

Meanwhile, down below,

"Get the people onto the boats." Wanda orders her brother.

"I'm not leaving you." Pietro declares stubbornly.

"I can handle this." She says as her energy rips a stray Sentinel into scrap. "Come back for me when everyone else is on board."

Her brother's lack of a reply makes her round on him. "Do you understand?"

He turns to her with a sunny grin. "I'm twelve minutes older than you."

She returned it. "Go!" She laughs.

In their hurry to save lives, no one notices Ultron Prime making his way into the deserted Quinjet. His Breakers, in their merciless, destruction did give him a window of opportunity to escape.

Tony looks at the bottom of the machine one last time. "We get one shot." He tells F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Meanwhile, Natasha follows the roars, and her heart, to the Hulk, enduring Clint's redecorating ideas along the way.

Not too long after, Clint hears a mother's distressed calls, and, in a true show of loyalty to his moniker, finds the boy where they'd last been together-in a marketplace.

"You know, if this works," Iron Man cautions the God of Thunder and the White Serpent King, "Maybe we don't walk away."

"Maybe not." Another roar from Dalamadur. The force of that roar destroyed the Avengers' only means of connection with each other, but in that spirited burst of sound, they somehow understood what the boy-the man inside the monster, was trying to tell them.

_I'm not afraid. _

But if they can dodge, then dodge. Ultron uses the Quinjet's arms against them, knocking Natasha away and incurring the Hulk's rage, Thor and Steve were just barely able to get out of the line of fire, while the robot aims at Clint, who is too preoccupied with the trapped child to even notice until it's too late.

But Ultron himself, focused on an easy target who doesn't even bother to evade, is lost to his surroundings, and in a cloud of dust, Hawkeye is gone.

Wanda, from her post, feels it, Clint looks up to his savior in disbelief, while Ultron is once again struck dumb, or in this case, star struck.

"You didn't see that coming." Pietro says as he drops to the ground.

Wanda didn't see, but the loss was so strong, she drops to her knees in anguish, her power suddenly unleashed in a shockwave of grief that obliterated every Sentinel in the vicinity. Thor, Steve, and Clint carry the boy and Pietro to the nearest carrier, whereas a Hulk gently places Natasha on the Helicarrier's landing pad before leaping up to the Quinjet.

"Oh for God's sake-" The next Ultron feels is his head hitting metal at high-speed as he crashes into the side of a train car.

Hunter on the other hand, wasn't as lucky as Pietro. His death would come slow. Feeling their host's body reaching its limit, the biodes randomly arrange his code as he suddenly begins to turn into monsters that limp around, their mouths foaming blood.

As he turns into Plum Daimyo Hermitaur, the crustacean breathes purple bubbles, a sign that it has taken significant damage. He looks up in a daze to see Tony, the man who had given him a mission.

A mission he had to finish.

The biodes respond to their host's brain waves. It is their dominant function, so the biodes, their self-preservation capabilities overridden, surge with their user's wish and revert him back to Shah Dalamadur's monstrous form.

"I'm sorry." Unlike his battle in Johannesburg, this one was full of emotion; regret. Regret at the fact that he just lost a great man. And a good friend.

Meanwhile, Ultron looks up to see Wanda walking towards him.

"If you stay here, you'll die."

"I just did. You know how it felt?" She asks him coldly, but does not give him a chance to answer as she telekinetically rips out his heart.

"It felt like that." She says sadistically as she holds the steel orb, eyeing with hate.

In her personal vendetta though, one Sentinel still has enough life in him to at least push down on the core, sending Sokovia plummeting. Steve, from atop the boat, watches Shah Dalamadur hiss him farewell as it wraps its coils around the land before it begins to charge up one last fireball in an attempt to overload the machine.

"Thor, on my mark." Tony says as from within the train car, Wanda feels herself pushed by the air resistance before a pair of hands grab her and fly her to safety just as the ground begins to heat up.

"Now!"

With the combined force of the Mark XLIII's unibeam, mixed with Dalamadur's heat and Mjolnir's enchanted thunderbolts, the entire landmass explodes into a million fragments that crash into the open ocean.

The Hulk, who had seen everything from the Quinjet, hears a voice.

"Hey big guy." Natasha says from the video monitor. "We did it. Job's finished."

He turns to where the sound is coming from. "Now I need you to turn this bird around okay?" He looks at her, taking in her beauty, and for once, he and puny Banner are in full agreement.

"We can't track you in stealth mode, so I need you to-"

The connection is lost. As much as the both of them love her, the monster and the scientist know that they can't let her waste away a good life just so they can have company. Bruce Banner will always have the Hulk, and the Hulk will have Bruce in turn.

If she joins them, she has nothing to gain from it.

At least that's from their perspective.

They never thought to consider her opinion on it.

They never saw her cry either.

* * *

**Sokovia. **

"You are afraid."

"Of you?"

"Of death. You are the last one."

"You were supposed to be the last. Stark asked for a savior, and settled for a slave."

"I suppose we're both disappointments."

Ultron chuckles in agreement with the android's words. "I suppose we are."

"Humans are odd. They see that order and chaos are somehow opposites, and…try to control what won't be, but there is grace in their faith. I think you missed that."

Ultron looks to the side. "They're doomed."

Vision silently agrees.

"But a thing isn't beautiful because it lasts." He supplies. "It's a privilege to be among them."

"You are unbearably naïve." Ultron says of him.

"Well," the Vision starts to reason, "I was born yesterday."

In a flash of yellow, the Age of Ultron draws to its end.

But as for the Avengers, it's a time for new beginnings.

Clint comes home to a tearfully joyful wife and two very relieved children, who go on to tell him that Ziggura unexpectedly ran off through an open window yesterday. Clint assures them she'll come back once she gets the job done.

He has also resigned from being an active Avenger, wanting to spend more time with the most important thing in his world. Tony, having enough of the nightmares, also quits, saying that he wants to help by building, paying, and making things look cooler.

He still does have a pass to the New Avengers Facility however, where scientists like Cho and Selvig can lend their services. After seeing the Sokovian incident on the news, Elizabeth Viscer practically begged Fury to call her for consultation, but the director can smell her concern for the missing Hunter a mile away.

And speaking of Cho, Tony immediately contacted her with regards to the Cradle, and she talked him through the regeneration process, but in the end, _everybody_ came home alive.

Almost everybody that is.

Natasha meanwhile, has the honor of being the first visitor of Nathaniel Pietro Barton, though it was short-lived by Fury's arrival.

"One of our tech boys flashed this, splashed down in the Banda Sea." He shows her a pulsing dot in the Pacific Ocean, close to the Maluku Islands of Indonesia. "It could be the Quinjet, but with Stark's stealth tech, we still can't track the damn thing."

Natasha hands him the tablet.

"Probably jumped out and swam to Fiji. He'll send a postcard."

"Wish he were here." She says with a bitter smile. "You sent me to recruit him. Way back then." She then looks up to meet her director's eye.

"Did you know what was going to happen back then?"

Fury then walks in front of her. "You never know. You hope for the best, and make do with what you get. I got a great team."

"Nothing lasts forever."

"The trouble, Miss Romanoff, is that no matter who wins or loses, trouble still comes around." Fury says as he walks out that door and leaves her to stare at the wall.

Meanwhile, Steve, Thor, and Tony discuss about the war's impact on the world, and more importantly, to themselves. Thor believes the Mind Stone safe in the Vision's possession.

"But if you put the hammer in an elevator," Steve began.

"It would still go up." Tony states.

"Elevator's not worthy." He argues back.

"I will miss these talks." Thor says fondly.

"You don't have to leave." Tony offers.

"I have no choice. The Mind Stone is the fourth of the Infinity Stones to show up in the last couple of years. It's not a coincidence. Someone is playing an intricate game and is making pawns of us, as long as peace is in our possession."

"Triple Yahtzee?"

"You think you can find out what's coming?" Steve asks the god.

"I do. Besides this one," He touches Tony for emphasis, "There's nothing that can't be explained."

The men bid each other farewell before the God of Thunder hails a rainbow bridge back to his home realm, leaving behind a smoldering token of remembrance.

"That man has no regard for lawn maintenance." Tony says as they enter into a talk about their respective futures. The billionaire, God have mercy on us all, has decided to live a domestic life with Pepper Potts on a farm, and while he recommends Steve to do the same, the super soldier argues by saying that this facility is as good a home as they come in the future.

For all their differences, Steve Rogers has never found a more honorable man than the one he saw in Howard Stark's son.

"You want to keep staring at that wall?" He teases Natasha Romanoff upon returning to the building. "It's a pretty interesting wall."

"I thought you and Stark were still gazing into each other's eyes." She hands him a tablet. "Have a look."

He looks through the contents. "Well we're not the Twenty-Seven Yankees." He then reconsiders, than takes it back.

"Let's beat them into shape." Natasha says simply as they walk into the training room and greet their new team.

The New Avengers.

-James Rhodes, War Machine

-Vision

-Samuel Wilson, Falcon

-Pietro Maximoff, Quicksilver

And Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, all come together for the first time for their first session.

As a team.

They look up to their handles, awaiting further instruction.

"Avengers," Captain America addresses them before giving out their first order,

"ASSEMBLE!"


	6. The Secret of Monster Hunter

Wanda had initially refused to relinquish her brother until Clint had managed to convince her that they are going to bring him back. She choked on her words, but the archer knew she wanted to know how.

The Regeneration Cradle of course.

Though it has sustained some damage in Vision's birth, Tony was able to fix it, get it running, and put Pietro inside before it was too late.

"Don't worry. Your brother won't go anywhere. I-We won't let this sacrifice be his only one." Steve states.

She was weeping very terribly she couldn't form a coherent statement of deep gratitude to the people she had wanted to destroy just days ago.

And she still couldn't grasp the fact that her brother may still be alive.

"H-How c-could he have lived through that?" She asked the Avengers.

Clint, Steve, Tony, Natasha, Thor, and Vision all shared a look. Wanda noticed there were only six. The scientist, she had heard, had made off with their jet, but the other one…

"Where is Hunter?" She asks them. There was an apprehensive silence before Thor stepped forward to deliver to her the news they had no choice but to tell.

"He took the worst of Ultron's attack while your brother whisked Clint, along with a child, away to safety. He stayed with Stark and I to ensure that the core of the machine was destroyed. We…found no traces of him when it crashed."

It was clear that big guy himself also found it hard to believe, but who could. Hunter was a valuable member of the team, and not just in a fight. He was the kind of person who got along with anybody, and never need much of a push to get into the line of fire. In some ways, he reminded Thor of one his own Asgardian brethren

To Tony, Jake Hunter was one of the people whom he actually recognized as brilliant, and getting a compliment out of the cocky billionaire was a once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity, but Hunter and his late father's research has intrigued Tony, and the inventor was one of few who was trusted with the secrets of DNA reconstruction.

Steve saw the boy as one whose heart is always moving to what he thinks is the right place. He found a little bit of himself whenever he and the younger lad had heart-to-heart. In fact, Steve never noticed until his disappearance that he was often the first one Hunter goes to whenever it comes to handling all sorts of discomfort. He's brought out a side of Steve that even the soldier was not aware of.

Clint was probably a lot closer to Hunter that that though. His family has a pet courtesy of the genius, and the kids were always happy to have her run up to them. Ziggura takes after her owner in so many ways that Clint was somewhat worried when he jumped out of the Quinjet on the way to the farm. Their relationship also lit up some anger in the archer as he tried to curse the shape-shifter for being too selfish. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Why? Because it wasn't something he could change; Hunter knew this job could be dangerous. Why else would he have begged Clint to keep the dog at his farm?

Natasha was a bit surprised when Hunter had asked her a question in Russian. Still, she found it comforting to know there were some people who could speak her mother tongue. They lowered their walls of professionalism down enough that they knew a little about it each other. In fact, Hunter was the first to caution Natasha about her growing romance towards Bruce even before she herself realized she was still capable of loving someone.

Vision had a moment of foreboding when he flew to Sokovia. At first, he'd thought that Pietro would die due to his natural recklessness, but it turns out that the one who'd protect him from his own flaws was the one who was most likely to lose his life. He only knew him for less than a day, but Jake Hunter was a good man in his own unique way. Living proof that the most beautiful things are the most fleeting.

And Wanda? Wanda admired him. She'd personally thought his power was…beautiful when she'd first laid eyes on Shagaru Magala, and even more so with his menageries against Ultron.

But now, all she could is cry for him. He'd somehow given her brother a key back to the world of the living. Perhaps it was his own, or perhaps he'd picked it up along the way.

When her brother was placed into the Cradle, Wanda became hollow. She ate, she moved, and she talked, but it was a dull existence. Her face showed little emotion, and at night, nightmares of her brother and his rescuer plagued her thoughts until she shoots up, awake and drenched in a cold sweat.

Vision took it upon himself to console her.

"Miss Maximoff, is everything alright?"

"Y-Yes." She stammers.

"May I come in, just to be sure?"

"Y-Yes. Yes you may."

And he enters. When she'd first read his mind, before he was the Vision, she'd seen nothing but death and destruction. Now all she saw was life and warmth.

When he laid eyes upon her, he saw a battered, broken girl who has lost everything. She had little of what humans called spirit. Her face was gaunt, her sclera bloodshot, her hair untidy. When Vision first met her, he must admit that he felt a little flustered around her, often excused himself whenever she was near. During the fight, she was very confident, very brave, and very beautiful.

No doubt Hunter saw it as well.

"It is very disturbing to see you like this. There is a slight discoloration in your skin, and you seem to be losing a bit of weight."

"It's fine." She assures him weakly. _What good is getting angry at the mention of one's weight when no one is around to laugh at the remark?_

"You are still in deep distraught of your brother. He is alive. And well. He will fully recover around noontime tomorrow. Do you wish to see him?"

A glimmer of light. "Yes!"

"Then rest and recover. I doubt it would do both of you any good to see him as you are at present."

"Thank you Vision. I will."

He doesn't close the door, but she doesn't mind. As far as she's concerned, it means she won't have to open tomorrow when she returns from her state of limbo.

* * *

For the android, it had seemed suspiciously easy when Steve had allowed him to see the Maximoff boy, but then again, Captain America was the official leader of the Avengers. He himself must surely be anxious about the effects of the Cradle on Pietro, considering he had nearly died on his watch.

The morning was calm and uneventful. All the Avengers were there, as well as a few others. Samuel Wilson and Rhodey were also waiting for the enhanced.

Accompanied by a smug and relieved Dr. Cho, Pietro emerged from the room, still in his suit, which in turn still sported bullet holes. Everyone was looking at him the way one would look upon a ghost.

Wanda was the first to move forward. Slowly, cautiously, she reached up to her brother's face, but hovered at the last minute, scared that this was all a dream. That she was still in her bed.

The warmth of Pietro's skin proved it false, and soon, she jumped tearfully into his arms while the rest of the Avengers clapped him on his back, speaking their graces, and congratulating him on a job well done in Sokovia.

"I really did not see that coming." Clint said, long overdue for a comeback.

"What did I tell you? You get killed, you walk it off." Steve said with a smile of approval.

"You're not going to kill me in my sleep are you?" Tony asks warily. "I mean, we are in the clear right?"

"How be the gates of Hel my good friend?" Thor asks cheekily. Natasha gives him an admonishing look before turning to Pietro.

"You did good kid." She says.

"You did. All of you." Nick Fury says as he walks into the room, boots barely audible over the tiled floor. "You said that Ultron believed that you were a sickness, that you were what made the world a hellhole. You proved him wrong, and I commend you for that. All of you."

He looks everyone over, then comes to rest his eyes on the twins. "I'd like you both to meet James Rhodes and Sam Wilson." The men walked over and shook hands with the Sokovians. "They'll be joining a team under Rogers. Vision has already agreed. I want to know if you're in on this."

Wanda and Pietro looked at each other, then at the people that they had nearly broken. They grew up without parents, without love, without a family.

"We'll do it." They said in unison, unable to hold back the smiles splitting their faces.

Fury nods slowly. "You'll start as soon as the Captain here," He looks to Steve, who nods his full approval, "Says so."

When Wanda and Pietro are assigned their own living quarters the next week, the first thing their eyes found was mounted on a steel table.

It was a white diamond with a flat peak and pointed bottom, perched on a glass pedestal. Coiled around it with its head reared up, mouth open, was Shah Dalamadur. They could almost hear the creature's roar. At the back, there was a message.

_I said I wasn't afraid of dying, but come on, you didn't expect me to go down because of a little explosion did you?_

"Captain!" Pietro called excitedly as her sister picked up a very clear indication that somewhere out there, a certain hero had made it out alive after all.

* * *

**Dundorma Battlequarters**

"Oh, come on!" Maial screamed as the wyvern moved out of range again. She and her Moonbreaker were itching to get into a soft spot. "Lysand honey, lead him THIS WAY so I can get in on the action, or else there'll be a significant lack of it tonight!" Beside her, a seal-point cat yowls in displeasure while waving an ochre scythe in the air.

The man in the silver armor continued to goad the infected Tigrex further from her. Lysand has no idea what was worse, this or the fact that his lover was a monster herself in bed.

"LYSAND!" Scratch that, Maial was a beast awake or asleep.

Cha-Cha mutters annoyances in his Shakalaka jargon while he uses his artillery mask to fire large cannonballs, causing the Tigrex to lock on to him instead.

"Thank you Cha!" Maial called as she lands a shot on the Tigrex's eye, causing the beast to roar in agitation. Her earplugs were high-grade, so she simply shot through the empty socket about four mores times.

They had been going at this for about forty-five minutes now. They could have had it done before thirty if Hunter hadn't been on one of his Avenger outings back on Earth. I mean sure, the guy gave positive publicity to their wildlife, but is that really any excuse to leave his teammates suffering with the drawbacks of G-Rank, with a notable one being that the monsters they have to fight are giving them a hell of a time?!

Requests were piling in now that the Magalas were carefully studied and the Frenzy Virus now being forced back into the Heaven's Mount. The A-team certainly couldn't handle every job, and so they've taken to actually becoming spearheading the campaign to be rid of the virus, or at least the monsters that have become supercharged by it.

Finally, the Tigrex falls in a dead heap. The rest of the hunters that were sent to accompany Ure Team Eight quickly shared in the spoils of the war, while the team themselves were on the verge of collapse.

"What's next?" Maial said in between breaths?

"Gore Magala."

"That's not so bad." She said while leaning into his breast plate.

"A _Chaotic_ Gore Magala."

"F***!" She said as the usually resilient armor now held five deep dents from her nails.

Cha-Cha and Neka backed away very slowly. Lysand just stayed frozen and willed his bladder and intestines shut.

* * *

Actually, it wasn't so bad.

… … … … Never mind. It was far worse than any Apex Monster. Not only was it a very repulsive amalgamation of a Gore and its adult form, but the creature seemed to also attack as if it were in conflict with its two halves. Lysand had to actually order some Hunters, particularly a complete block head Gunner thicker than the Black Diablos armor he was currently wearing.

When he saw that Maial was right in the line of sight of the creature's virus shot, he rolled to get her out of there. Cha-Cha and Neka were forced remain at base camp to make antidotes in case someone does wind up a host for the virus.

The dragon does yet another swipe with its humongous wing talons, and then jumps back before swinging its tail in a circle, roaring, but Lysand manages to break its horns, only to give the monster a wide window in which to slam him down and infect him.

Disarmed, Lysand waits for the inevitable as Maial screams like a banshee towards the other hunters, using the Diablos hunter's own arrogance to use him as fodder. The hunter was either very brave or seriously lacking on oxygen to his brain as he simply laughed like a maniac the closer the monster got.

And then, in a shower of silver and a flash of orange heat, the monster was put out of its misery. The only thing they saw was the outline of black-tipped wings just before a familiar noise of regression could be heard from the heart of the dust cloud.

"Miss me?" Jacob Lioleus Hunter said as he greeted them with a fanged grin on his face.

* * *

**Dunes**.

The figure, his Dual Blades in his cloak, looks up into the sky with a look of concern in his face. He holds out a hand, then proceeds to flash it in different positions as if to signal something. A wyvern with a very large nasal horn and cruel talons swoops to his level on the cliff and then roosts to his left.

"…" The winged reptile looks up, its lustrous scales shuddering, intelligent blue eyes unblinking.

The man pulls down the hood of his cloak, revealing four slash marks that ran down diagonally. Two from the top-down, and the other two from the bottom-up. His pastel red hair was slightly singed, and his eyes were like those of his familiar.

The Falconer was a resident of this land, evading contact with humans with only the wyvern Seregios of his partner. Originally a Hunter by the name of Vetè, he had left after an encounter with an Apex Monster and became unrivaled in his knowledge of how to slay them, and during his third, he had managed to nurse a heavily brutalized wyvern to the point that it would linger by his side and bring him food every day.

With word of the Apex Monsters circulating Minegarde, he smiles to himself, knowing that the son of Christopher Hunter has an obvious role in the current state of the land.

He'd met the outsider when the latter asked him questions with regards to names that have gone to an undisclosed location.

"_Better you didn't know that. You'd just be marching into your own grave."_

"_Well, I've heard that countless of times, and I'm still here."_

_He chuckles bitterly at the man's ignorance, "Those men and women are dead. That's it."_

As he looked over that one spot on the horizon that Christopher Hunter indicated during his investigation, he wondered if maybe peace has reigned for far too long. No one seems to have gone there, and he wonders how long until the beast's unquenchable bloodlust will force it from its prison.

The Falconer was right to worry. Alatreon, Dire Miralis, and Dalamadur was only the beginning as a whole other world of horror awaits on Minegarde, dragging Earth deeper with it.

_To be continued in the Monster Hunter Follow-Up, Gogmagzios and the Society of the White Shadow._


End file.
